The Gang Rape Scene in Bandit Queen

August 01, 2006 | 04:58 AM
The Gang Rape Scene in Bandit Queen
Udayan asked : When I watched Bandit queen and perticularly the scene where She was being gang raped. I almost throwed up during that scene and took me about a week to get over it. How did you managed to film that scene? I mean the intensity that you put into that scene simply can't be just direction!

Udayan, any film maker that can tell u exactly how he/she planned to execute a scene is either lying or was being completely dishonest about the shooting of the scene. I merely locked myself in a room and tried to imagine what being raped was being liked. I went into myself and realized that the body, the mind and the soul must escape the body to escape the utterly humiliating and defiling act.

So I went for that. To shoot the whole thing in a surreal fashion _ as if it was the mind was trying to escape the body.

If u look carefully though the scene is put together in a series of close ups intercut with the opening and closing fo doors. When I was filming I kept throwing up because I was recalling the emotions that I was experiencing imagining myslef being raped. The crew could not understand - for what they saw was me shooting a lot of close ups and opening and closing of doors.

I wanted to stop filming, and it was ony my DP Ashok Mehta who insited that I kept filming.

I have said this in press before, and got a lot of flak from feminists who ask how I dare say that as a man I can somewhere understand what rape feels like for a woman. I disagree. I am hoping that underneath our sex we are all human. It is a human being that I was experiencing being raped. Morover the making of Bandit Queen made me much more comfortable with my feminine self. As all of us are both feminine and masculine in different degrees.

It was the feminine self in me that felt the force of that violation.

Shekhar

Masoom and Naseeruddin Shah

February 11, 2007 | 06:10 PM
Masoom and Naseeruddin Shah
I have so may questions from people that remember Masoom. It was my first film and get surprised that people remember it so much. I must start blogging about my experiences from it. I picked up though, the following extract from a recent interview with Naseeruddin Shah which evoked old memories of old times, old friends ....

The following extract is from 'Times Now' :


AG: I remember ‘Masoom’. I was a child when I was taken for the film. I still don't know why I was taken to see ‘Masoom’ but....

NS: But for some reason everybody showed their children ‘Masoom’... to prepare the ground I guess.

AG: Maybe it was because of Jugal Hansraj?

NS: He was angelic. ‘Masoom’ in fact was after ‘Sparsh’. It was wonderful. I went into it with an attitude of great patronage because Shekhar Kapur at that time was nothing but a failed actor and boy friend of Shabana, you know... and I thought "oh poor Shekhar... he wants to make a movie and let’s help him out".

But with the very first shot that was taken in that movie, I revised my opinion of Shekhar Kapur as a film maker and realised that I was in very safe hands and that this was going to be a very wonderful movie. I felt that from the very first shot that he did. There's a shot of an envelope that's the letter I received, and then there is a tracking shot of my hand with the envelope as I am walking down the office corridor and from that moment onwards ‘Masoom’ was a total joy. And there are very few movies which have been like that,


Thank you Naseer for those kind words.

Shekhar

shekhar

where, why, what, whom ?

August 13, 2005 | 07:12 PM
where, why, what, whom ?
feeling anxious,
am flying to LA tonight,
always anxious when I go there

LA is a city of temptation
but how can i curse it,
because temptation is only as effective as you are tempted,

but LA conjures a web around you,
makes you revel in illusion
and people live in some illusion of immortality
and i get caught up in that too

and though life in mumbai is so angst ridden
floods, disease, poverty, contradiction
uncomfortable, traffic jams
pollution - u name it

yet it reminds me every moment of the day
that I am mortal
and flawed
and just a particle in the universe

and that my sense of identity
individuality
is constantly challenged in mumbai

but inflated in LA

so I am anxious !!