Radha Chadha is an author, columnist, speaker and a leading expert on marketing and consumer insights in Asia. In her latest book, ‘The Maker of Filmmakers’, she tells the remarkable story of her father Jagat Murari and his role in shaping the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), which produced some of Indian cinema’s most influential filmmakers.
Drawing on more than 100 exclusive interviews, rare archival material and insights from Bollywood legends, the book explores how Murari’s vision helped transform Indian cinema. She spoke to Asian Voice about the book and the legacy of a man who helped shape generations of filmmakers.
1) What first drew you to tell your father Jagat Murari’s story, and when did you realise that his journey was also a story about the making of modern Indian cinema?
A few years after my father passed away, my mother asked me to help clear out his study in Pune. There, I found three Godrej cupboards packed with diaries, letters, film scripts, photographs and files upon files of personal papers. As I started going through them I realized I had stumbled upon something extraordinary. I was holding a chunk of India’s cinematic history, as lived out by a man who had helped shape it.
Jagat Murari’s biggest creation, the one that revolutionized Indian cinema, was the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII). Here, he turned out legends like Jaya Bachchan, Shabana Azmi, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Subhash Ghai, Mani Kaul, and scores more. They became some of the finest actors, directors, cinematographers, sound designers, editors of Bollywood. They spearheaded the Indian New Wave. They kickstarted regional cinema. They ushered television into the country. They helped Indian cinema become the global powerhouse that it is today.
This story had never been told. I felt compelled to tell it.
2) How did your father’s encounter with Orson Welles while working on Macbeth in 1947 shape his vision as a filmmaker and educator, and how did he carry those lessons with him when he returned to a newly independent India to build FTII and shape its vision at a time when the country itself was finding its identity?
An encounter with brilliance reconfigures you in indelible ways. Jagat Murari was a film student at the University of Southern California, when he interned with the legendary Orson Welles on his 1947 filming of Macbeth at Republic Pictures. Republic gave Welles a modest budget and just 22 days of shooting time, and yet Welles turned out a masterpiece. His secret? Equal measures of creativity and discipline.
That lesson – brilliant filmmaking is possible on a tight budget and short schedule – stayed with Jagat Murari. He returned to a newly independent India, and became a documentary filmmaker at Films Division – where he too worked with shoe-string budgets, yet won many awards, including India’s first President’s gold medal for his film Mahabalipuram. In the 1960s, at FTII, he had his students make their exercise films with tiny budgets and four shooting days, and the films were extraordinary. In the 1970s, FTII alums led the Indian New Wave, turning out pathbreaking cinema – again with extremely limited resources.
3) You had access to your father’s personal diaries, letters and papers, as well as interviews with more than 100 alumni and colleagues. What was the most unexpected discovery during your research?
In one word, audacity. He was an audacious thinker, always aiming for the stars, irrespective of the umpteen constraints that he functioned under. He wanted FTII to become the best school in the world, despite having an annual budget of just Rs. 3 lakhs, which in the 1960s was equivalent to £25,000. He wanted to transform Indian cinema by making an entirely new kind of filmmaker.
I was equally surprised by his ingenuity. For example, during FTII’s early years, he faced such an acute shortage of teachers that he could barely keep the classes running. His solution? He persuaded the likes of David Lean, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor, Ritwik Ghatak, Kamini Kaushal, Balraj Sahni, Ismail Merchant and James Ivory to come and teach as guest faculty. In 1963-64 alone, he pulled in 50 such guest lecturers. He converted a famine of teachers into a feast of the best! It became a tradition over the years, and students learned from the finest minds in cinema.
4) Your book is both a biography and a history of Indian cinema. How did you balance the deeply personal story of your father with the larger cultural and cinematic history surrounding him?
Honestly, I never experienced this as a balancing act, because Jagat Murari’s personal story and India’s cinematic history were inextricably intertwined. In fact he had an uncanny habit of standing exactly where history was happening. His journey into cinema itself started unexpectedly on a US troop ship, which at the end of World War II, transported him from what was then British India to study cinema at the University of Southern California.
On his return, he joined the Films Division just as it started, becoming part of Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision to use film to unite a newly born – but fragmented and often fractious – nation together. He built FTII from the ground up, turning a shaky star-up into an iconic film school. He founded the National Film Archive of India. He later set up the Directorate of Film Festivals. He modernized the National Awards.
As I wrote his personal story, the broader history of Indian cinema unfolded organically, and the eco-system of cinematic institutions fell in place.
5) Indian cinema has travelled far beyond India, becoming an important cultural bridge for South Asian communities across the world. What role do you think films have played in helping generations of the diaspora stay connected to language, culture, family and memory?
I am reminded of Suketu Mehta’s words: “Why do I love Bollywood movies? To an Indian, that’s like asking why we love our mothers; we don’t have a choice. We were born of them.”
Indeed, Bollywood has an extraordinary hold on the collective South Asian psyche, far flung and diverse as the diaspora might be. Films shape our cultural practices and bring a sense of over-arching community, a bond that transcends geographical location. Take South Asian weddings for example – you are just as likely to hear ‘Gallan Goodiyan’ or ‘Kala Chasma’ performed at a Sangeet in London or New York as you are in Delhi or Dubai. It is hip-swinging fun, no doubt, but it is also vital bridge-building in action.
6) In an industry increasingly driven by commercial pressures and algorithms, how important is it to protect spaces where experimentation and artistic risk-taking can flourish?
Absolutely crucial, because without experimentation, the art of cinema itself cannot progress.
In this regard, I am thrilled with the emergence of ‘Indian Film Festivals’ that are being held all over the world, and supporting experimental cinema with gusto. The list is long – London Indian Film Festival (LIFF), Indian Film Festival of Melbourne (IFFM), Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (IFFLA), and many more.
I attended the New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) earlier this year – my first such festival – and was delighted with the feast on offer: 50 films in 15 Indian languages. I saw my first Manipuri film there, the BAFTA-winning Boong. I met many filmmakers – including FTII alums Sayani Gupta, Jasmine Kaur Roy, Avinash Roy – and understood how hard it still is to make indie and art-house films, and the crucial role that these festivals play in encouraging these filmmakers. However, we need to do a lot more – especially in the area of finance – to allow such films to flourish.
7) What do you hope readers, particularly younger filmmakers and members of the Indian diaspora, take away from ‘The Maker of Filmmakers’?
The question that intrigued me most while writing ‘The Maker of Filmmakers’ was this: How did Jagat Murari “make” such outstanding filmmakers at FTII, with such remarkable consistency? How does one shape an actor like Jaya Bachchan or Shabana Azmi? Or a director like Adoor Gopalakrishnan? The answer? He had a ‘secret formula’ – one that he tested and perfected – and that is at the heart of the book. I hope young filmmakers benefit from his secret formula!
But even beyond filmmakers and filmmaking, there is a universal vein that runs deep throughout the book: In those formative years after India’s independence, there were men like Jagat Murari who reached for the stars, who had the gumption to build a world-class institution on a shoe-string budget, and who helped transform an entire industry.
I hope readers will take home a sense of that spirit.
