Subhash Ghai, Chairman and Managing Director, Mukta Arts Ltd. is a film-maker of repute and has pioneered the corporatisation of an industry, namely Bollywood, that was notorious for being unprofessional. He has 16 successful hindi feature films to his credit and has recently set up the Whistling Woods International Institute for Film, Television and Media Arts. He was welcomed on-stage by Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM. Here are a few candid observations that he made.
“My heartiest congratulations to NASSCOM for organizing this summit. A few years ago, I heard all this talk about the rapidly growing market for animation and wondered where were we going to find the human resource for it. That is when I decided to set up the Whistling Woods International.
Everyone wants to become big and make money but the first step to that is education. I remember, when I wanted to join the film industry, my father, a doctor by profession, laughed and told me, “Film-making is not a job but a matter of luck. But going by your brilliant academic record and seeing that you are very keen to join films, I suggest you go and join the Film Institute in Pune. Learn everything there is to learn, evaluate yourself honestly, prepare yourself thoroughly. I took his advice seriously and the training I got from the institute back then stood me in good stead. It gave me a solid grounding for my future career.”
Talking further about the problem plaguing the Indian Animation industry, Ghai said, “What we are sorely lacking is storytellers. Writing is our biggest weakness. We are ‘job-doers’, not thinkers. That is why there is a great need for the right approach to educating people. When I want to make films or games, when I want to scale up, whom do I contact? Surely, not finance or marketing guys! We need people with vision. As far as stories are concerned, we are a rich country. But what do we do?”
In his self-deprecating style, he went on, “Movie after movie, we repeat ourselves. The story is always the same. When they introduced me here on stage, they said I have made 16 films till date. But I say I have only made one film – Kalicharan, the rest were as good as Kalicharan 2, Kalicharan 3 and so on. I made 16 films, but all the same.
I met the late Dhirubhai Ambani once. He said to me “Our population is our strength. If only we could educate them all. Our other strength is our knowledge of English. It helps us go global. The third strength lies in our stories. If only we could take advantage of these and develop them further.”
Citing the example of the movie – The Ten Commandments, he talked about how the age-old story was presented in such an interesting manner that it caught the fancy of everybody, whether of the same faith or not. The calibre of story-telling was that good. He also expressed dismay at how Indians are looked at today. “We are proud of ourselves but how are we projecting ourselves? Once when I was travelling abroad, the immigration officer saw my passport, observed that I am a film-maker and asked me if I made the film Gandhi! The one film about the most famous Indian that foreigners are aware of wasn’t even made by one!”
Addressing the Indian animation studios, he said “All of you must have an institute each. Artists are very important.” He then went on to share his experience with Whistling Woods, talking about how imparting education, seeing students grow and progress, can give so much joy.
Again he stressed on the importance of education and of protecting and growing original content. “The focus must be on story-telling programmes, on eradicating ignorance in people. There are parents dont want to send kids for longer periods of training. They need to be made aware.”
Another point he wanted to highlight was originality. “Even our TV shows are not original,” he observed. “We import foreign concepts and Indianize them. The only original TV idea we can truly call our own is probably Antakshari!” The audience couldn’t help but applaud in agreement.