 Corbin, did you know that muffins spelled backwards is exactly what you do to them when you take them out of the oven? Did you know that muffins spelled backwards is exactly what you do to them when you take them out of the oven? You sniff them. That's muffins spelled backwards. Sniff them. Indians don't sniff their food. You should! Hey, welcome back to our Steve and Frank Sips Up Corbin. Sniff your food! You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter for more juicy content. Thank you, there's always a lot of Patreon, follow us on Instagram and Instagram. Who was it that recently did that? There you go, I pointed it out to Andrani. I don't remember, but anyway, yeah. I mean, that's part of the process. We've said it before. I mean, it's all connected. Why do you think people, before they take a sip of wine, smell the wine? Today we have an interview, it's a snippet of an interview with Anupam Chopra. Interviewing someone or being interviewed herself? Interviewing, it's a panel, but this is specifically the director of the behind the scenes of what we just did. Oh, the train. The train. To Lugu. This is him. Got it, the director. This is a snippet of him talking about an excerpt, this is an excerpt from the interview by her with the prominent directors of India. Prominent, he's known as a political director. What does that mean? He said a film that, in directors that have stories that involved politics? I guess, I don't know. They like to classify a lot of stuff like Nawaz, he's a negative actor. I guess. He's a negative character or whatever. Okay, well, somebody here that would fall into that category that you don't hear a lot from anymore, but back in the day that would be considered a political director would have been Oliver Stone. All of his films are political statements. Maybe it's like that. Gotcha. But this is him talking, I'm specifically about, I think this film as well. So, here we go. To film companion for your film fix, hit the bell icon so you never miss an update. From all India, back to you. In your film, Mr. Naya, about harrowing film about police duty. Wow. I would have liked to know more. It didn't seem that political. There's a character who says, the system is all powerful. We are only pawns. Today it feels like the system is even more powerful. The conversation is so shrill, it's so polarized. How do artists who want to tell political stories function today? What is, what are you all experiencing? Anyone. No one wants to talk about that. I would say that my politics is my films and on a personal level, my problem is to say the story that's more relevant today because everything today is like, you know, we all are being stifled. So to pick up the right one, which is going to be of the most relevance and most, which has the most urgency to discuss, I think that's more important. And then making a film that has a political view, a strong view means we are saying something that the system is not going to like. And it really needs to make a film of those kind. It really needs a big support system to do it. You need an investor. You need actors or non-actors. Someone to come in and pull this off so that we are able to deliver the film. It's a teamwork and all of us are unhappy with this whole setup, like not just the people who want to make films out of the issues. The whole world is unhappy. We have some people. Why is it some people don't? I feel that that is why all this is happening. We are able to make films and you guys are able to do this. Deepakar, you said in an interview that you keep raising your voice and you make risk, you make calculation about how much personal risk you can take. Let's talk about that calculation when you make your films. Asuran is also, all your films deal with corruption. They deal with the privileged and the not privileged. They deal with caste. How do you make this calculation? How do you figure out, I can say this, but this would be too much? First, to understand the kind of films that I am allowed to make, you need to understand... Are they near an ocean? Thamar cinema scenario is better. Because unlike any other films based, Thamar cinema has always been part of... It has been used as political tools. Like for the past 70-80 years, it has been used as political tools. And there is a blessing as well as curse for the Thamar filmmakers. You don't have parallel movement in Thamar. Whatever you do, you have to do it for the mainstream. So you dilute it to an extent. And then the Thamar mainstream viewers are forced to watch anything that is given to them. In terms of there is no elite viewers, where you just make an art house film, a parallel film, that is constrained to a limited viewers and you have other means of getting back the investment. Everything has to go to the theatres. Like a theatre that runs in the Rajnikanth film will have to accommodate another film that would, in another place, be called a parallel film or an art house film. So this is the background in which the Thamar films are being made and Thamar filmmakers think through this only. And making political statements, especially what politics political statements is very, very prevalent in Thamar. The audiences have a direct connect to this kind of, like, undertone, whatever. An actor who might or might not, or whenever he feels like coming or whenever he does not feel like coming, wants to make a statement and the audiences understand that as a reference to his political entry or the political party that he's going to start. Like any actor who's been acting for 15 years, successfully, will have an idea of getting into politics, like vote politics. Whether he has it or not, his fans have it. So we just live around that. And the Dravidian movement have got a very strong presence, even today in Tamil Nadu, because of the effective and efficient use of films as a means of taking their ideology. And that has given a lot of freedom for Thamar filmmakers and the Thamar viewers are kind of broader. And on a personal level, for me, to start with I have an actor like Dharmesh, who is going to back me, so I don't have issues with my investments. And then the major challenge I had was with Asuran, because it's not just a political film, it's a Dalit film, where the protagonist of the Dalit and the protagonist is not a Meek protagonist. He stands up for what he feels is right and he brings down the upper-caste people. This was the most challenging thing for me, because we had a lot of pre-production and while we were shooting we had a lot of speculations. We were thinking on... We did not want to offend anyone, because we are stating facts and we want everyone to understand the film. We wanted a Dalit to have a representation within the film and then a non-Dalit to see that and feel what had happened in the past. We wanted to know their parents, their grandparents were responsible for whatever that had happened. That was the major challenge that we had. That was the reason we refrain from mentioning any specific cast. Of course we set it up in a particular geographical space where there are certain castes that are dominant, but we did not make any specific references. Everybody felt responsible for what had happened to the protagonist and his family and whatever that happened. Of course we had all historical references, whatever that was shown in the film were incidents that really happened. That was in the collective unconscious as well and in the memory itself. People had it in their memory when they watched the film and then they took responsibility for it. I think that was the reason behind the mainstream success of the film. India has such a unique landscape for political films in general though. India does? India. You're very unique. Because, one, I don't know about, especially the local politics. I'm not a master in the national politics in India either. A lot of references in films we will never understand. Ever. Because we're not there. If you make certain references, here we'd understand. We're in the political landscape here and all that kind of stuff. There's some political stuff from India that we would pick up on, but it's very minute usually. But the fact that they also have a censor board, especially now, that won't let them say everything they want. Probably. And so they have to, and specifically with Tamil, because I've heard it repeated now multiple times that they've never had a parallel cinema. That's been repeated multiple times by multiple different actors and directors now that we've heard. So everything that they do has to be made for the mainstream, which is super interesting. I don't know, maybe it was Mani Ratnam's fault because he made messaging and he made points in films that were political, but that was big, or Kamal Sahn. I was going to say that's the other contributor. He's the other one. And maybe there's people before that as well. Sure. And maybe that's why it never went to parallel because they're making this into the national media of Tamil cinema. So I find it very unique because it's very different than obviously here. Very. A political director can say whatever they want. Or a documentarian like Michael Moore. They can say anything they want and not only will the government not interfere. At all. The government will say nothing. No. No matter what is being put on film. Yeah. I mean you can have on the, whether it's an apology to the government or just flat out lunacy or flat out just propaganda of, what was that stupid film that just came out recently that was sex trafficking? Sound of freedom. Oh my God. Who, you know about the, yeah. But like, is it batshit? I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it. They have every right to make that film and say whatever the fuck they want to say. Right. And that's allowed. But it's not the case fully in India. No. I mean go to the Grand Extreme. If the KKK wanted to make a movie about how much they hate everyone who isn't white they could do it here and the government wouldn't stop them. People would protest. People would say that we shouldn't have films propagating hate and propaganda but the government wouldn't get involved. And there's, it's interesting. It saddens me that the question has to be asked and she asked it. What are the things you have to take into consideration about how, what you can say and what you can't say? A filmmaker shouldn't ever have to have that consideration. They should just say whatever they want to say and then let the chips fall where they may. Granted. There are complexities to Indian cinema and Indian politics and Indian culture that I, we will not only never understand but because we do not live in India. There are, I think there are many, many times, I've learned this lesson myself where the West has said something about Indian politics where the West should really just keep their nose out of it. Yeah. It's stuff that I don't really try to get in there. I just like, what do you guys think? Yeah. I ask that all the time. I was like, if we miss stuff, if we need to know stuff please let me know because it's all ignorance up here. No. And for me, it's the line for me when it comes to anything about a political statement say in a film from India is there's two criteria for me when I would voice something about it. First and foremost, it's primarily something that's being depicted in film or TV. The other one being it transcends the politic of it and becomes more about the human rights universal aspect of it. Absolutely. I will always think of for human rights. Everything else tends to fall into divisiveness even here. But again, you can make a film like Sound of Freedom. You can make a film like The Last Temptation of Christ. You can make a film like Platoon or JFK. Again, Oliver Stone films. Terrorists that took down the World Trade Center wanted to make a film. This is a weird scenario. Obviously it wouldn't happen. But if they wanted to make a film about how they were right in knocking down towers, sure, go right ahead. You're going to lose a lot of money and no one's going to support it because it's universally not okay. If you want to make that go right ahead. I will support your right to do that. I will not go see it. There are challenges that filmmakers do face in India where they recognize multiple things that filmmakers here don't have the constraints of is the censor board going to approve this? Am I going to hurt people's sentiments? Is that going to make people not see a film that I otherwise want them to film and is it worth the cost of that for me to do that? Or am I now being not honoring and I'm being hypocritical in my elevation of artistry? It's so much more complex than anything filmmakers have to deal with here. So much more. Absolutely. Would Mani Ratnam or Kamal Sahn be considered political? I would say yes. So many of their films touch upon so many things in that regard and talk about things that are... You know what I think they're brilliant at? They're brilliant at presenting things that are political but focusing on the human rights element of it so that you see something and you're left to decide for yourself. Oliver Stone is preachy. Michael Moore is preachy. I think Kamal Sahn and Mani Ratnam and this director... Do what we just saw. Yes, not at all. They do a very good job of showing things to people and saying, here's what I see and based on the lens I'm seeing it through, tell me what you think. Yeah. I agree. You guys let us know, obviously. Are they actually considered political directors? I know Kamal Sahn's gotten into politics before. Rajna Khan's got... That was a funny thing he said because it's apparently, literally, a natural step. Rajna Khan did it. There's been rumors that Vijay would do it. I guess it's just one of the natural steps, I suppose. Yeah. Especially in Tamil, it feels like. Tamil Nadu. Yeah. It kind of goes... There's a reason why so many artists are vocal about things politic. They really do go hand in hand. They really should go hand in hand for anybody that cares at all about anything pertaining to humanity. Well, unfortunately, politics includes human rights, which it shouldn't. It should be universal that. We should be kind to people and people should have all their rights. Yeah. But unfortunately, it's political. No, it is. And anytime you have a group of people together, anywhere in the world, you're going to have the politics of that group have to be navigated in a way. And that's one of the biggest problems that we've seen, especially here in America, is the problem of people no longer learning how to live with each other and recognize that you can't get everything that you want to. Now it's that you're on that side and I'm on this side. We're right. You're wrong. And we have to do everything we can to stop you. That's sucky. I agree. Yeah. Anyways, let us know what you want because I know people will give a lot of recommendations for his next films. Obviously, please listen to what his next films will be. Very interested. The one with the NUSH, which is really good. Yeah. I think we talked about it. I thought we had seen the one with the NUSH. We haven't. I was thinking about a different film during the review. Oh, okay. We talked about one of the films. I thought we had seen one, but it was not a different film. Not that one. But let us know down below. Josh!