A director’s angst

Anurag Kashyap, the director of Black Friday, has an axe to grind with the Indian State, censors and film industry

Nasrin Sultana Delhi

Who are the perpetrators and who the victims? Hindus? Muslims? The police? The State? Or does everyone inflict violence and suffer its outcomes as well? Some questions find answers, some die a silent death, and others are hushed up altogether. The Babri Masjid was demolished, the 1993 Mumbai blasts killed more than 200 people, the Srikrishna Commission report was ignored despite the Bombay pogrom of 1992-93, clearly implicating Shiv Sena leaders and the police. While the Mumbai blasts’ accused have been punished, the guilty criminals of the pogrom are still calling the shots. And in between, somewhere, Anurag Kashyap made his painstaking film Black Friday, a cinematic interpretation of the events leading up to the Mumbai killings and the investigation in their aftermath.

Black Friday has finally hit the screen with some of the finest actors in Bollywood. Be it Tiger Memon’s (Pawan Malhotra) shrewd conspiracy, criminality and self-indulgence, Inspector Rakesh Maria’s (Kay Kay Menon) interrogation and introspection, Badshah Khan’s (Aditya Srivastava) fundamentalism and later desperation, or Dawood Ibrahim’s (Vijay Maurya) silent, sinister gestures — all actors do justice to their characters. The dark film disturbs but also pushes the audience to introspect.

Black Friday was ready for release after being passed by the censors in 2003. However, the Bombay High Court put a stay order on its release till the verdicts on the main accused in the blasts case were given. Anurag Kashyap, the director, spoke with Hardnews, on the angst of the three years since he waited for the release and the making of the film.

On the government’s sudden liberal attitude towards the release of films like Black Friday, Parzania and Paanch

I am happy about it, maybe it’s like hamara time aa gaya hain (our time has come). I know it’s been a tough journey and I hope everything turns out well.

The shooting of Black Friday

The film is based on the book by the same name by Hussain S Zaidi and follows the same format of five chapters. The film begins three days before the day of the blasts in 1993. The characters are real, the shooting was in real locations and we took the camera to places that had never been filmed before. I am fortunate that Black Friday was a film that chose me. Everything that is there in the film is from the book, but not all the things in the book are in the film. The film sticks to the periphery of the main bomb blast. We shot a lot of footage that was separately edited and made into a TV series. The main decision lies with the producers as to how and when they are going to release it.

Censorship and government

There are many layers to censorship. There should be a single authority that approves things. Someone approves things and along comes a second or third to disapprove it. Look at Parzania. After everything was cleared in Gujarat, some Bajrang Dal guy gets up and says the film should not be shown in Gujarat. The Indian audience is mature but the Indian government is not. People have seen Black Friday, kids have appreciated the film and its relevance. It has been appreciated in colleges, IITs and film festivals, more than by the buddhas (old people) sitting in the Union cabinet.

‘Moral guardians’