“It was the golden age of film and television,” she says, reminiscing about her journey through the media industry. Mitu Bhowmick Lange’s voice is strained over the phone, as she was recovering from a sore throat and cough when I spoke to her, but through the coughs, I can still clearly feel (and hear) the excitement in her voice. Bhowmick has had an incredible professional journey. Hailing from Kolkata, she now resides in Melbourne where, in 2010 she founded and runs the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM) as the Festival Director, but being a producer, director and founder of Mind Blowing Films, the largest distribution company in Australia for Bollywood films are also notched on her commendable resume. The IFFM is perhaps the largest Indian film festival there is and the work, sweat and tears that Bhowmick has put into it earned her the prestigious Jill Robb Screen Leadership Award, making her the only Indian to ever do so.
She tells me about her early days in film school and working at Zee TV. “It was a lot more spontaneous and organic, we could do a lot more with the programming, people were more approachable and we could experiment more with shows than now. You could walk up to the programmer and say ‘hey! I want to do this, or try this’. It was a lot more straightforward,” she says.
Bhowmick moved to Melbourne after marriage and found herself in an unfamiliar space, having left behind a career path she had worked to create for herself. “I was very resentful and miserable because in India I had a good job and I was part of the media and television world. In Melbourne, I didn’t have anything going on. Slowly, slowly, I tried to create my own little world here. I got a job at a media and advertising company and I somehow managed to convince my very Australian boss that we should look at India as well because at that time we were only looking at American productions and working to get them to Australia. I knew in my mind that India could work and it was mostly untapped,” she tells me.
“I went to Yash Chopraji who knew me from my TV days and told him to please come here and film something. He said he can’t film anything right now but suggested ‘why don’t you try distributing our films there in Australia?’ He said, and he was right, that we are very underrepresented there,” she adds.
She shares her uncertainty about it all with me. Coming from a very hardcore academic Bangali family, distribution wasn’t a part of her spectrum of possibilities. “I told him I didn’t know what to do and he was very helpful and provided the guidance I needed. Sure enough, when he came here we went around and we realised that most of the Hindi movies were being screened in the Chinatowns and Indian community halls. I remember the first Indian films I saw I Australia were Lagaan and K3G. I remember I was sitting in these makeshift cinemas that were barely functioning and in the middle of it the projector stopped working and when the reel was changed it was a completely different film! The audience for it was there, there were just no avenues for these films to be watched,” she said.
With Mr Chopra’s counsel, Bhowmick set up meetings with Australian companies who were reluctant at first, citing previous bad experiences with other Indian distribution companies. Though, you wouldn’t imagine these apprehensions when you now walk into cinemas in Australia with at least one Indian film playing at all times – something Bhowmick says she is very proud of. “It makes me so happy. You will find not just a Hindi film but Tamil, Punjabi and Telugu films being screened as well. I feel very proud about the kind of growth the market has witnessed since we started,” she muses.
It was initially the South Asian community that would attend these movie screenings, with some bringing along their Australian friends, spouses and partners. That’s when the idea of a small festival showcasing the best of India’s film industry, open to anyone and everyone interested, sprung to her mind. When the government came on board in 2012, Bhowmick said it gave IFFM a lot more credibility and her a lot more confidence – “From then on it just took on a life of its own.”
Winning the Jill Robb Screen Leadership Award, awarded to those who have contributed tremendously to their fields, is no easy feat. And to say that Bhowmick is well-deserving would be an understatement. “I worked really hard to make Australia my home, and Australia has also given me a lot in return. When I got the award I felt very accepted; it’s an odd thing to say but this wasn’t an award specific to Indians doing things just about India or for India, it was much larger and holistic than that. It was such a positive recognition for everything that I have done, worked for and have been trying to do, it was incredible,” Bhowmick tells me.
She cites her mother as her inspiration when it came to navigating an industry that has for a long time been dominated by men – a strong woman who always worked hard and made sure she did the same. I ask her about the representation of women in Indian films, had there been changes in the way that they are portrayed on screen and written as characters. There are noticeable changes, she says, the biggest being the growing number of strong female leads and women-centric films. “The fact that we have more and more films like Veere Di Wedding and Raazi, commercial films that do so well is so great. It’s a sign that things are changing for the better. Now it’s like we get a new woman-centric, woman-driven film every 6 months as compared to in the past where we’d have one odd women-centric film that would come out every 5 years and make huge news as sensational feats. The fact that they’re doing well commercially is also important because that means that we will have more people willing to back such films in the future. It encourages openness, more women to talk about their problems and depict that on screen. Other people see this and it encourages such communication, normalises it in daily life,” Bhowmick comments.
Speaking about IFFM, one of the integral aspects that Bhowmick emphasizes on is inclusivity – one of the four pillars she says, along with race, sexuality and disability – and providing visibility to all kinds of films. What’s incredible about film festivals, and why they are so important, is the equal platform they provide. It can be a levelling effect for movies of all subjects, budgets and ‘star power’. Here, you get all kinds of cinematic gems in one space, one platform with equal focus. These are often films that don’t get enough distribution no matter how much people may want to watch it. “It’s important for them to have a platform to voice their artistic expressions. I’m not saying it’ll trigger some massive change or movement but it’s a start. We all grow up watching films, there’s so much we learn from them and these are films that kids should grow up watching. Growing up, we never got to learn about things like sexuality in the films we got to watch at the time. Festivals, this way, can be a great method of changing people’s views and allowing them to see things from a very different perspective,” says Bhowmick, and I couldn’t agree more.
Art does have the power to change. It may not be a huge movement, but it’s about the conversations, the one-on-one interactions that it initiates and allows to take place. Bhowmick agrees, recalling an instance from a few years ago when IFFM had screened the film ‘I Am’ by Onir, who was also present there. “Onir has always been such a great advocate for equal rights. I remember, after the screening these sweet Indian boys came up to him and were discussing their own experiences with him. One of them said ‘I am not gay, but my friend is and he is having problems with his mother, can you suggest what he can do?’ and the conversation went on from there. Towards the end of it, this boy had enough confidence to shyly admit to us that, ‘okay I might also be confused sometimes and don’t know what to do’. I felt so glad in that moment because had the screening not happened, this boy would not have had the chance to interact with Onir, who is also of Indian heritage like him and is so comfortable in his skin and gain that little confidence to be himself. That’s the beauty of festivals,” she says.
Bhowmick has come a long way from her days at Zee TV and the vision she holds for her future, that of Indian cinema in Australia, is a bright one. One with the opportunity to provide funding to struggling filmmakers, writers, actors who have good stories they want to tell – that need to be told. “Well, that’s the long-term goal that I have in mind, to create some kind of fund. Short term would be to just continue to have more dialogues, more quality content and discussions – anything that helps us open ourselves and our minds,” she says, barely whispering at this time as I manage to talk her ear off, bombarding one question after the other. What other chance would I get to pick the brain of such an accomplished woman? I do remind her to sip on some haldi-honey-ginger tea for that throat, though!
Feature image courtesy of The Statesman.
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