Q&A WITH VASAN BALA

His movies are often smorgasbords of cleverly curated pop-culture references with a scrumptious side of pastiche. The filmmaker's recent outing is as a show creator for Amazon Prime Video's docu-series capturing the golden age of pulp cinema of the '90s, Cinema Marte Dum Tak. A classic case of a genreagnostic die-hard fan of cinema crossing over to the other side and becoming a filmmaker, he seems to be the perfect candidate for the job

- Ananya Ghosh

Vasan Bala, who ended 2022 with the retro pulp thriller, Monica, O My Darling is back with his next offering, Cinema Marte Dum Tak - a six-episode series documenting the thriving independent ecosystem of Hindi pulp cinema of the '90s and the early 2000s.

Often called B- or C-grade films, these were made on shoe-string budgets and were high on sex, sleaze, and often horror. Catering to a socio-economically less privileged audience, these movies ran through packed single-screen theatres across the country. In recent times, they have found a new audience and cult status among the fans of camp. The Amazon Prime Video docu-series follows four of its successful directors, J. Neelam, Kishan Shah, Dilip Gulati and Vinod Talwar, through the process of making what could either be their swan song or their comeback movie though the gaze remains that of an outsider. However, what helps in creating a more balanced and non-judgemental narrative is the fact that Vasan, who had discovered this kind of cinema through VHS tapes, is an ardent fan of the genre and his movies often incorporate pulp cinema references.

"They are from a different era and did what they deemed necessary to survive and made those movies. It is not on us to pass a judgement on their work, or who they are. The idea was to document them and their work in all honesty and let the people decide and have conversations around it. We didn't want to be intrusive and push in our moralities on them. It is not about if they were good films or bad films, but that this kind of cinema existed in India at a certain point of time. Through it you can also understand the socio-economic situations of the era and how that impacted people's taste and choices then. The culture of documentation is extremely essential for society," says the filmmaker.