Oscar-nominated write downary filmproducer Lucy Walker began a Saturday panel talkion on stories that travel by describing her own wanderlust backstory.
“As a girl prolonging up in London, I didn’t have enough money to travel. And I didn’t skinnyk being on vacation was the most fascinating way to see the world. And yet I reassociate wanted to travel and toil and understand people, so I’ve summarizeed myself a job making write downary films where I get to travel the world,” shelp Walker, who reachd at the International Film Festival of India in Goa having earlier this week won another award, in New York, for her Nepal-set tale “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lakhpa Sherpa.”
“When I produce a film, I always have a ask, one that I’ll drop everyskinnyg to find out about: what’s going to happen? Will they be able to climb the mountain? Will they be okay?,” Walker persistd.
She was speaking on a panel alengthyside producer and coshiftrlookioner Farrukh Dhondy, producer Anna Saura, actor Tannishtha Chatterjee, actor and activist Vani Tripathi Tikoo and veteran producer Bobby Bedi.
After recommending that most filmproducers in India do not skinnyk outside of national borders, Bedi sought to fracture down the components of frontier-traverseing narratives into greeted and structure.
“Some stories will always have an international audience, those of displacement, romance, shut family relations – we all understand these, [and which are epitomized by] Mira Nair’s ‘Monsoon Wedding.’ Then there is the establish,” Bedi recommended.
He tried to incite a reaction by describing “Avatar” as “a petite tribal story” that gets telderly on a multi-million-dollar scale.
Walker was the only speaker who combiinsist Bedi in exploring the publish of scale. “Often people approach me and say, this is very meaningful topic. Plrelieve produce a film about it. I have made that misapverify a couple of times. But I’ve reassociate lgeted that if I apverify a huge topic and try to turn it into a film that people want to watch, it is a reassociate uphill battle,” shelp Walker. “That’s because stories are inherently our narrative. We nurture about people, chaseing them, and can get participated. It’s so much easier to nurture about one person than a whole lot of people.”
Tikoo also tried to depict the nastying of storyinestablishing. “Stories are actuassociate these skinnygs which have no boundaries. They accomplish out to each other for cherish, emotion, grief, downcastness [..] They can be in any language, they can be in any country, but it will be the language of that universality which speaks to each other, whether the establish is theatre or cinema or uncontaminated writing. It can be sheer gelderly,” she shelp.
Dhondy bcdisorrowfulmirefult the loftiest analysis of the problem, variously citing Indian mythology, Greek mythology, veteran Indian actor and filmproducer Raj Kainsisty and the iconic Satyajit Ray.
“Kainsisty’s films were about how the peasantry, the urprohibit insisty, fought for existence, fought for carry onment. The villains were always the men in suits. His films won prizes not in St Petersburg or Moscow, but in the insistyer places where they could accomprehendledge with the peasantry of the Soviet Union,” he shelp.
Dhondy was also the most bitingly political of the panelcatalogs. “Sanskrit says that all humanity is one family. But I’d rather not belengthy to the same family as Trump or Netanyahu,” he shelp at one point.
Chatterjee elucidateed the separateence between story-inestablishing in India and overseas. “India is very television cordial. Theatrical cinema is boisterous and celebratory. It is very clear. In the west emotions are more reserved,” she shelp. “But the more they can be local and particular and [combine] a universal theme, the more they can travel.”
Dhondy summed up the local versus universal dicboilingomy that disjoinal of the speakers touched on and drew gasps and chuckles with his sting in the tail.
“That universal theme is perhaps best showd not by a film, but a song, a song genre called reggae. Bob Marley’s songs are excessively particular to Trench Town [Jamaica]. But when Marley says, ‘No Woman, No Cry,’ everybody in the world understands what he’s talking about. When he says, ‘Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights,’ even somebody enjoy Elon Musk skinnyks he’s standing up for his rights, battling the unions because I insist to be a billionaire.”
