Anuparna Roy: Feminism came to me organically
The foundational element of Anuparna Roy’s debut feature film Songs of Forgotten Trees is female friendship and solidarity. Thooya (Naaz Shaikh), is a migrant and an aspiring actress, who takes to sex work to survive in Mumbai. Not as just a compromise or struggle but also wielding it as an instrument of control over men. If she is struggling with something, it's the unresolved grudges she holds against her father for having destroyed her mother's life. She seeks regular help from a therapist, while living independently to fulfil her own dreams and ambitions.
Thooya sublets the apartment, provided by one of her benefactors, Nitin (Bhushan Shimpi) to Swetha (Sumi Baghel) who holds a good IT sales job but for the lack of a family of her own is in search of a good husband. The tentativeness and distance between the two women slowly start making way for a tacit affection, shared confidences and unspoken understanding over rehearsals and songs, poem recitations and dinners and washing clothes and cleaning up the house together. Not to forget a bright red sari, Thooya's recollections of her childhood friend Jhuma and the fear that one day she'll forget her name.
As the past intrudes into the present, emerging desires collide with unsettling memories and jealousies and resentments start raising their ugly heads, the delicate bond looks set to transform into a bigger force.
A self-trained filmmaker from Purulia in West Bengal, Roy creates tender vignettes of the lives of two women, with sparseness than florid flourish and articulates profundities through silences and a lilting song about forgetfulness and remembrances. Debjit Samanta’s camera captures their intimacy within the space they share and also isolates their togetherness in long shots of them in the balcony of one of the many box like shabby buildings of Mumbai.
Some of the elements, like Thooya’s memory of her childhood friend Jhuma and her father’s dislike of their bond, hark back to Roy’s own lost friend, Jhuma Nath, who was married off at the age of 13.
Presented by Anurag Kashyap, the film had its world premiere in the competitive Orizzonti (Horizons) section of the Venice International Film Festival in which it won Roy the best director award. "This film is a tribute to every woman who’s ever been silenced, overlooked, or underestimated. May this win inspire more voices, more stories, and more power for women in cinema and beyond," said Roy.
CE caught up with her for a quick chat long before the win, just after the premiere.
Excerpts:
How was the premiere in Venice?
Like a dream come true. I always dreamt of being in Venice and it actually ended up happening.
Tell me a bit about your journey into filmmaking…
I have always wanted to become a filmmaker since my college days when I was studying English literature. I was influenced by James Joyce, RK Narayan and Rabindranath Tagore and Nazrul Islam. Annie Ernaux was one of my favourites. So, it was sort of a dream to become a filmmaker, otherwise I could end up becoming an IT, corporate guy perhaps.
So you are a self-trained filmmaker…
I never studied cinema. I did English literature, then I came to Delhi to do journalism. I ended up quitting journalism and joined a call centre, and then I gathered money and wrote the script of my first short film. I ended up shooting it in my own hometown, Narayanpur in Purulia, West Bengal. I grew up there in a joint family. That’s how the journey started.
How much did you draw from your own life experience for the film—the characters, relationships, situations…
I've seen two women bonding in my own family. My grandmother and her stepdaughter. My grandmother had a child marriage with a 30-year-old guy who had a daughter from the previous marriage. She was the same age as his second wife. I saw them after he passed away. I saw these two women taking care of the whole family. My step aunt became the provider and my grandmother became the receiver, playing the role of a homemaker. There was no need for a man in this arrangement. It was so beautiful seeing them together. There was nothing romantic but it made me feel like it could have been romantic too.
No wonder your film is so strongly feminist…
The kind of society I grew up in, there was this constant feeling of being dominated by the first gender. It always made me feel that I must speak up about it, write about it. When a child goes to a school, the first thing it gets to know is the differentiation of the gender which is completely man-made. The girls have to sit there, the boys have to sit here. The government initiatives provided rice to the girls while boys used to get books and toys and whatnot. That’s how I started seeing through the lens of the suppressed gender. So, feminism came to me very organically.
It's interesting that in your film there’s a woman employing another woman to keep her own husband away from her…
There is a point where women feel a sense of detachment from sex because that sex is not mutual, that sex is not coming out of love, that sex is coming out of hawas (lust, lasciviousness). In every female character in the film I have explored this detachment from sex. Nitin’s wife hires Thooya to be the provider of sex for her husband. When Thooya is questioned by her roommate Shweta about carrying another woman’s burden she replies that even Shweta will have to shoulder that burden after a point of time when she gets married.
You are also exploring the migrant life, their survival instinct…
I've seen people around me who are still in the business of surviving in the city. I wanted to always portray a sex worker in my film who is unapologetic about it. That always fascinated me. She is not a victim at all.
How did you go about financing it, putting the project together?
First Ranjan Singh came on board. I always wanted to work under Anurag Kashyap. When I saw Gangs of Wasseypur I remember having an argument with my father. I told him that I don't want to be someone that you want me to be. I don't want to get married early, I don't want to sleep with someone chosen by you. I want to make films. I knew Ranjan sir and Anurag sir worked together. So, I hustled and reached out. He liked the script and told me to just do it. He ended up helping with the funding.
So, it was Ranjan Singh, Anurag sir, my friend Bibhanshu Rai, and Romil Modi who came to me like a god. It has been a collaborative thing. I would love to thank my co-producers, Vikas Kumar and Sharib Khan. They did a great job. They have all been the saviours for me and we all had a great time together.
There’s a certain sparseness to your filmmaking. You also use silences effectively. The most intriguing bit to me is the play of memories--what you remember and what you forget…
The urge to tell a story was secondary, my urge was of portraying the personal, emotional space of mine. When we talk of memory, there’s the water in the film which symbolizes the flow of reminiscences, the Hollong trees which have been a close element of my life, the song of Naaz Shaikh's (who plays the protagonist Thooya) late mother that she used to sing for her. She's a great friend of mine, I used to hear this song from her, and I ended up using it in the film. Naaz associated it with the good memories of her mother, the time she spent in the past in rural Assam. So memory is a very personal denotation of mine as well as Naaz. It's a mix of everything, the dysfunctional marriage of parents, the loss of a friend, the loss of the song, the extinction of the Hollong trees.
