By Pratim D. Gupta
21.02.2005 / The Telegraph (Calcutta)
Anjan Dutt films the Chinese breakfast scene at Poddar Court for his documentary. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya
After the likes of Satyajit Ray and Goutam Ghose, it's time for Anjan Dutt to slip in a documentary amidst his fiction filmography. From last Friday, Dutt is out on the streets of Calcutta with his Bow Barracks Forever production crew shooting “his tale of two cities”. “It is about the similarities of Berlin and Calcutta,” says Dutt. “Both the cities have centuries of history behind them and are in the middle of a raging crisis in the wake of globalisation. There is an acute identity crisis for the common man in both the cities and my film will try to explore that.” Dutt will use the Max Mueller Bhavan “mobile theatre” project called “Call Cutta” as a take-off point for his documentary. Conceived and directed by the German-Swiss theatre group Rimini Protokoll, the concept of the theatre is about people walking the streets of Calcutta and Berlin directed by an unknown voice on their cell phones. “I'm using the theatre project as an excuse to try and explore the internal conflicts that these two cities are undergoing,” says Dutt. “I have handpicked certain people in Calcutta and Berlin who will do the walk through the streets, as directed on their mobiles. Then, I trace their personal lives and what they think about the changes around them. I don't know what I'll discover at the end of it all.”
For Martin Walde, director of the Goethe-Institut, the film is the only enduring outcome of the theatre project. “Since there is no audience as such for the 'walk', Anjan's film is the most important product of this whole endeavour,” says Martin. “We have done something similar in Pakistan and the film shot there was shown on German television. We are planning to do the same with Anjan's film.”
While Dutt has stuck to his constant collaborators, cameraman Indranil Mukherjee and sound recordist Gautam Nag for the Calcutta leg of the shoot, he has roped in a Greek lensman and an Argentine sound guy for the Berlin schedule. “We are also shooting a lot of typical Calcutta images, like the Chinese breakfast at Poddar Court, Esplanade, Chandpal and Mullick ghats, College Street, Dalhousie and the Academy areas,” adds Dutt. “But the focus in the film will be the old Calcutta, with a major part of the walk being shot in Hatibagan. I'm also planning to capture this new call centre life of Calcutta and try to co-relate everything.”
The music of the hour-long film will be composed by Anjan's son, Neel. But there's a German twist in the tale, here too. While Neel will compose the basic theme, celebrated grunge drummer George Kranz will jam with the theme.