CINEMA AFRICA 2021 - In Conversation with Filmmaker Sharvan Anenden
Abstract
- Abstract
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In the german city of Bayreuth, during the winter of 2021, the 13th edition of the CINEMA AFRICA film festival took place. Despite the ongoing pandemic, the team of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence and a group of filmmakers from different corners of the globe were able to showcase five films, that truly showcased the artistic diversity of modern day African filmmaking. With a regional focus on the Indian Ocean, last year's films took us from Tanzania and South Africa to La Réunion and Mauritius, creating a space for stories once overlooked and untold.
During the filmmakers' short stay in Bayreuth, we, the Cluster of Excellence, were able to sit down with each filmmaker to talk about her/his respective works.
In this video Interview Prof. Dr. Ute Fendler and Mr. Adebanjo Baderin talk with Mauritius filmmaker Sharvan Anenden about his film, The Comeback. Amongst other things, the filmmaker chronicles his creative process and the challenges faced in incorperating Bollywoodian aspects in his film.
CINEMA AFRICA 2021 Trailer:
https://youtu.be/ic2xULGVZ5A
Cinema Africa Interviews:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDlHB4qY36Wi8VczSMvmrDs1zFXoRRh0-
Thanks for Watching!
Description
- Transcript
- i'm very happy to welcome you in by word and that we can screen your film the comeback at cineplex in cooperation with africa multiple first of all it would be nice if you could present yourself yourself to to the public all right so i'm charlotte and then this is my second feature film that i've done in mauritius and prior to becoming a film director i was working in advertising in london i was an art director i got sick of london and the advertising world so i tried to continue in the filmmaking because uh in in the middle of my career in advertising i co-directed lisa fonte my dad but then didn't pursue the idea of cinema and then for the comeback in 2015 i thought let me take a chance had a proper career as a director and that's why i'm here today okay great we are happy that you are with us today so we would like to talk a little bit about uh about your film and i will hand over to adebondro okay thank you very much um the first question i would like to ask you is though what informed the the title of the theme the comeback uh so the the whole story was written by my mom it was the first time she wanted to do something that was directly for the screen so it's the first time excuse me you should mention who your mom is my mother is a prominent writer for my country of mauritius and we adapted from the silicon and made the film and for the comeback that was an original piece for uh for cinema so she directly wrote the script she came up with the title and it just has to do with the idea that it's three retired bollywood actors would like to make their comeback and uh that's a term in the industry to do a comeback so that's it maybe that would be a good moment to give a little bit more of information about about the content so there are three bollywood actors three bollywood actors they're retired uh they still have this passion for cinema and acting but uh everyone is telling them they're too old to continue their career so they meet a woman who would like to be a film director but because she's a woman she will easily hit a glass ceiling because of the patriarchy in india in the bollywood industry so this little group of people who are marginal from the industry decide to have this very far-fetched idea to follow a young and up-and-coming actor from bollywood kidnap him in mauritius and tried to convince him to make a film of them and it's your comedy it's not a drama thank you um also i i i didn't know i don't know if you've heard about the comeback in the united states there's a film the comeback no i heard there's a tv show there's a tv show the comment about the woman from france yeah yeah okay so it doesn't have a way of influencing the topic no no it was just uh just it just happened to see everywhere not everywhere okay and um did you like you said okay it was a story or maybe written by your mom and you brought it fought into a film you made it you produced the film yeah okay um the question now is um did you um at any point what are the difficulties you have making it into your film if i want to ask you could you be okay when you think it's annoying and difficult okay when you got the story yeah did you face any difficulty adapt that's the difficulty that i had was that initially it was very easy but we didn't realize how big the film was so i did everything myself because on when i when i my direction in the list of was a standalone one as well it was a much smaller film so we could have a small team and i enjoyed the fact that we were a small team it's quicker to handle it's just easier to manage and i thought i'd do that with the comeback and she wrote the comeback we read it together we wrote certain things we did not realize it was a much much much bigger film and so i had to i wanted to direct myself i wanted to do cinematography myself and it was just a pain in the ass you know say those words it was painful yeah so initially initially there wasn't any problems because it was just really fun to try to manage a schedule and as we were going along the production went for a long time there was a lot of reshoot because the film was so big and we should have had a bigger team to handle a lot of things yeah then you said in beforehand that it's a comedy um there are not so many comedies actually and if we would stick to the category of african films uh why why have you updated the two of you maybe then together for a comedy honestly that was her idea so she came when she came up with the script i was i didn't even choose to uh end my career in advertising and go into cinema it was just a little idea she had on the side and she was telling me about it and then things merge just randomly and uh her idea was to write something funny okay and i was happy with that because if i like i'm trying to get a career as a film director and i wouldn't mind going into comedy because that's what i prefer so it's a good start but i mean at the same time you mentioned before the the starting point of the film is all the problems that those three retired actors have and also this young film director who's not cannot enter the industry just because she's a young woman so at the same time it's a very very serious topic actually especially especially for the young woman it shows all the problems i mean from harassment to um to a lot of other problems that you have in in this big film industry so i wanted a few also maybe i mean you just said something else but when i saw the film i also wondered maybe you have opted also for comedy because it's a kind of a delicate topic to to deal with and if you deal in it with a in a comedy it's easier to for for the public and whoever is involved to say okay yeah it's just a comedy comment um if the the ideas of marginalization were a theme in the film then uh yeah we would have used comedy to educate people in a much easier way but they're not theme at all it's just contextual and it's just a way for the people to be brought together it's just so yeah it's just contextual it's not a theme throughout the film it's just it's just to introduce the characters but because throughout the film we don't go back to those ideas of discrimination we just continue with their motivation and their context of kidnapping someone so yeah because it happens often it's just okay um there were some concepts that you brought into the film um that i would love to share more ideas with us um like the woman who wants to be a film director who believed that we could match the hold with the new and produce something more meaningful now is that a real situation in mauritius now like bringing the hold to meet the new like the old actors to meet the new is this something you personally believe not in mauritius because there's not that much of a cinema industry but in general ageism is a problem in the entertainment industry okay so you would see that in europe and in america as well usually when there's a film with older people they're either secondary characters or it's an ensemble cast and the theme is about their age but you don't have this uh rarely get this mixture where their whole protagonist together okay so one of the concepts you wanted to really bring in his edges and actually yeah yeah good thing yeah good point i didn't think yeah so okay now the second part i would also want to ask is um why did you choose them to use something like at a point when the actor was kidnapped they choose to apart from the kidnapping they also tried to do black men yeah why did you choose the steam of black male 2 for them to get their results because if if you thought about it if you would be crazy enough to go into that direction blackmail would be a tool that you would use to convert someone it's just uh you know it's criminology 101 so yeah okay so now that brings us to another thing criminology yeah so one of the things you try to achieve in that film also is bringing to be the investigation of crime okay and that brings me to um why did you choose to bring an inspector a detective all the way from the united kingdom to investigate something that is taking place right there in mauritius the role of the investigator was for a russian woman initially so that didn't happen because the woman the woman was the main actress from lisa marvel she got pregnant she couldn't do the thing and then we auditioned the role robert came with another guy who was the inspector and they auditioned together and that guy had great energy and he had a perfect accent and we thought we need to get him in and we thought the best way to do so was to not make him appear as a local but someone who came from uh from outside and mauritius still have a long history with england and the monarchy and it's not unheard of for a small country like mauritian mauritius to get consultant from outside for certain issues whether it's an investigation or a business deal or social issues into politics okay now this is another question before i handle that um do you think because you said when you talk about ageism and everything do you think that would you advise that or would you say that the new generation of film producers yeah have a lot to learn from the older generation in order to get a more formative one of something more or beautiful yeah but that's a bit of an obvious statement because uh the history is already there the work is already there so you just need to just make your education on your own you know things will always evolve you need the past to be able to go forward and not to repeat your mistakes and evolve or retrofit so you can make an homage to the past and get different ideas in the future yeah let's talk a little bit about bollywood because the film starts in in india and in the context of bollywood industry uh i mean this was obviously also i imagine at least that this must have been a also a decision to to take it from there and not to take it from england for example with three retired actors from great britain could have been an option uh it was initially for the uk the producer he found wanted it to be in india okay yeah we were gonna we could have he wanted indian actors so we were gonna shoot in the uk with indian actors and have this bollywood theme but we thought it would be a good call to try to do in marshalls i mean seeing also the the the historical relationship between india and america's i always also thought that maybe it's due to that fact because i mean media and everything is quite impressive it's a more gracious financial and creative strategy logistics strategy that would be more okay bollywood films also i mean i've i imagine at least i saw quite a lot of indian media channels in in mauritius also on tv so yeah people like that particularly we didn't think about it that way okay because they do shoot more indian film go everywhere they should have the money to do to shoot anywhere yeah so it's there's a lot of bollywood actually in in the film also in terms of singing and dancing could you say something a little bit about that i mean how how this came about and how people think about it and also the actors initially the theme of bollywood was a bit more tame because we didn't have any singing so we went through the whole shoot of the film and once it was finished the producer required us that to add music because it would be more competitive in india because that's where he wanted to go so those songs were added after we finished the principal photography so it took good i added another two years because we had to travel to india we had to find the songs then we have to plan the shoot for the uh the musicals and all that stuff and it just it was a problem to add those piece of music inside the story that was already written and we had to make it look a bit natural and i still haven't i'm happy they're there but i mean they don't fit that well i mean but the one there on i mean people when they watch this video maybe then they have already seen the film hopefully all they get more curious especially that one that is close to the beach where they are singing and that's it very much like the romantic one yeah romantic one that one actually had very good and that one is that very dark fits in the pasties of bollywood yeah you know absolutely yeah that one works out but even in the film it's going there this book okay maybe it's also because in the beginning of the film and in the office you're a bit surprised as a spectator you're a bit surprised oh okay now they dance and sing but then in a bollywood logic it should not be a surprise we could even get up and dance and sing now in the middle of the interview be no surprise i brought my golden scarf for that these are back up dances um yeah you said that you have the that the film making was also not that easy because you had to do or you also wanted to do everything yourself maybe can you also say a little bit about photography in the film so initially like i wanted to get into cinema because i love cinematography i've always been really impressed by how an image looks it's almost hypnotizing so i was really happy to be able to handle my own camera and do the lighting uh i did it with a minimum of instruments and it kind of worked out in a way but at the same time i mean that's why i like cinema every time you do a film even if there's a lot of flaws you already know that what you should do better next time from what you learned from your previous mistake um and that was the fun part to get my own camera i would not like to listen for tomorrow we had a director of photography i didn't like the idea it was very cumbersome on a personal mode he was not happy i was there so he was not cooperative on purpose it was a massive problem so always on the comeback it was really cool to be able to do it myself but i should but i was also doing the producing and that was a bit of an error because there was too much to handle yeah i mean producing my first day of shoot so in france in summer the sun goes down around 9 or 10 p.m i completely forgot it was different in mauritius so my first day of shoot by two o'clock i didn't start shooting because i'm managing all the little things having to bring food for the actors by four o'clock i see the sun coming down and every time we press start and stop to record the sun has changed angle and at the end like my first day of shoot i was not able to have anything so that was very traumatizing it's okay but then yeah but then you know you learned the lesson during the first day in the future i mean that's the advantage i've learned on the field in a brutal way so it's the best way to learn and can you also give us a little bit more information about the main actors in the film yeah so everything was shot in mauritius and all the actors are mauritian so technically the least mauritian person on the production was me because i was born there but i didn't grow up there [Music] in the audition process it was important for us to tell them that they would need to be able to have to be fluent in english even if they don't have that much experience with the acting in english they should have a comment of it most of them had in the audition process most of them came from the theater so the only problem we had is during the audition they would project their voice because that's what theater people do so like you guys need to dial it back because you don't need to reach the audience at the back of the room so that was the only thing otherwise they had good energy and there was from the beginning we saw there was a great back and forth from the people we chose in the end and they didn't know each other at all okay so that showed uh that they had personality and they had experience for them to be able to to show this chemistry immediately on the first try that was really lucky for us yeah yeah actually i thought that the young i forgot his name but the one who who's playing the indian actor who's kidnapped i've thought that he's indian actually uh yeah he's also mauritian and this was his first film acting uh his first star it's all it's their first starring role for all of them they did advertising before or secondary roles in short-term and bigger production well okay yeah but i mean the film is fun watching i think and uh and the singing and dancing scenes get better till the end i mean the first one i just told you man this is my very would you like to say that i didn't i didn't like the the first one um and the second one i don't remember places of worship they go around it's a bit touristy okay now they should just add another hour because bollywood forms at least two hours or three hours oh i was happy we had to cut our film it's barely 90 minutes so yeah that's a good thing no okay then because the event should already [Music] so there was the first film this is now the second film and i know you just uh released or you just had a book published in photography could you also tell us a little bit about that quite different from your films but still i mean still yes there's a mauritian writer called barlin who wanted to launch a book festival in todo dos which is a small village by the sea where he lives and so he knows my mom and he knew i was a filmmaker so he just randomly asked me if i wanted to do a photography book and then i'm like alright cool no problem and he asked us another photographer but he found him on the street as well so the second photographer in the book he's a young mauritian who's 20 years old he just came back from south africa after he studies he saw him on the street like a tourist with a small camera like do you want to do a photography book he's like yeah so that's what we did after seven months he got really lucky we did this work uh it was a good launch with the festival and you were there and we are doing an expo in december in portuguese and then next year we might go to a bigger one or art center which is our progress okay but on the same project or it will be also a larger project than uh somewhere it's the same project but there will be more photos there was some restriction between the type of products we had to do for the one in codon art center we might be more free to expose a bit more because there's more space more time i mean to me for me seeing this book was a bit of a surprise because after this very colorful opulent bollywood kind of film this this book is in is are all black and white photographies that was that was already the choice of ballen from the beginning he knew what he wanted to do with the formatting of the book he wanted something in black and white he didn't want any titles on the pages and he knew we should not have first the photo of laura's second the photo of charlotte so yeah he wanted something that was a bit floaty and dreamy like there's no there's not a necessary logic to the pages and the choices yeah but the point actually i wanted to make is i mean it's it's it's just also i mean i mean amazing it's it was surprising to me to see how someone coming from filmmaking and advertisement and arts uh art design and so on i mean doing some in a completely different form format let's say and also black and white photography it would also be very different than from photography and colors and i mean those are very impressive and beautiful okay pictures of and very close to people and to this very small village but very let's say a little bit traditional still traditional village okay kind of so um like even if even if berlin was the one who had the idea you still did i mean you and luhan took the photos and you have i mean you have to you need to have that also the eye and then to capture the atmosphere and with black and white it's it's very different um so i was just surprised that that was a very beautiful book and you obviously you go into quite a dif at least with this book and the exhibitions that are coming up into a quite a different direction well in general we all specialize in a specific medium that's usually the path most people would take but i never did that so when i was an art director i've worked on different medium all the time so i always switch from one thing to the other so it wasn't too difficult for me there's a learning process at the beginning physically be handling a camera that i haven't used i'm to go towards people when i'm not that much of a social person these were the problems i would have but i would overcome them but in general it's even when i was in art school my graduation portfolio they were always different i have done animation before i've done 3d as well um so yeah and you skipped all of that when you introduced yourself in the beginning okay what i'm saying now [Music] another thing when i was a kid i used to do a lot of graffiti as well okay but i got arrested for that so i stopped okay so maybe just to um yeah to come to a last point um in our interview uh i the the the project your work i mean besides the photography and the exhibitions um i think you're working also on a new film uh i'm trying to do a documentary another format sorry another another genre again yeah because it's interesting to just change or you know but uh and i always wanted to do documentaries and because of the cove there's more restrictions and uh the documentary it's a good strategy because i was thinking how can i try to do a project without having to go through the motion of looking for finances and in mauritius it's a small country i've already made a lot of contacts it was a quick idea for me to think if i approached someone to say i would like to talk about their art and i would like to talk about the history of of mauritius i wouldn't necessarily need to have a financial incentive because i already have a relationship with those people so it's almost like it's a community project that's why i don't need a lot of finances i have my car i have my camera i have two other cameramen with their gear and they're ready to work for free because it's a cool project and everyone just wants to do something interesting because we were stuck at doing nothing for two years but you still haven't really said what the cool project is about uh it's a documentary the history of mauritius seen through the eyes of the artists of mauritius okay one you know several artists are mauritius so in general i was more interested in talking to all the artists because some of them were there since the independent and when we were interviewing them they would always talk about the past when i wasn't even born and that's why i clicked it would be cool to take some themes of the history of mauritius as a developing country a developing new country and then have artists talk about it because it will be related to the theme of their uh of their work okay sounds interesting actually because then you have again this yeah the perspective of artists and what they also contribute and bring in very often especially photography um paint and painting is very off i mean like visual this is an artificial i wanted to do a series of episodes uh the first episode for example it's uh uh the the actor it's one of the actors that's in my film he's a playwright and he's the one that talked to me about the independence and also censorship and theater so it just clicked that would be cool to talk about all those things because he's an activist and he's a playwright and an actor and so it was just another thing to talk to and it sounded original as well i've never heard of that angle in a documentary the second one is a younger artist called ken and i was going to talk about the environment because he's someone who recycles objects and makes very complex instruments and he's a great musician another theme would be about the ravan which is a very mauritian instrument so by talking about this instrument we would be interviewing musicians in a different field and we would be talking about the history of that instrument that's linked to slavery and all that stuff so all those different symbols have different elements in history and they all gather together and we talk about the different aspects of the country okay when will it come out hopefully next year okay at the end of next year i'm giving myself a year to do a few hours okay okay we're looking forward to that yeah so thank you very much thank you for having me for having shared all this information and uh hopefully we'll be back next year then with a documentary okay and graffiti and thank you very much you
Origins & context
- Title
- CINEMA AFRICA 2021 - In Conversation with Filmmaker Sharvan Anenden
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Cinema Africa 2021
- Date
- January 31, 2022
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