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To continue the series “Initial Steps”, excerpts from an interview of Director Prakash Jha,
taken by Ajay Brahmatmaj , are presented here.

Ajay writes

I had started my interview series with the interview of Prakash Jha. He is my elder and to some extent my guide also. Perhaps it is difficult, at present, to evaluate the contribution of Prakash Jha to Hindi cinema but he has brought a new language to the Hindi cinema.

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[Following is the translation of the Hindi Interview and may not do full justice to the original interview so to read the exact sayings of Prakash Jha, one should go through the original interview. This is simply a trial to expose the interview to those readers who can not read Hindi at all]
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From now onwards Ajay Bramatmaj will be represented by AB and Prakash Jha …

Orson Welles, Jean Renoir, Ingmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bernardo Bertolucci, Frank Capra, Francis Ford Coppola, Jean-Luc Godard, Fellini, Kubrick, Michelangelo Antonioni, Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack, Steven Soderbergh, James Ivory etc etc
and
PC Barua, Sohrab Modi, Mehboob, Kedar Sharma, Bimol Roy, K. Asif, Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen, Mani Ratnam, Gulzar, Shyam Benegal, Govind Nihalani, Mani Kaul, Basu Chaterjee, Hrishikesh Mukharjee, Chetan Anand, BR Chopra, Yash Chopra, Vijay Anand, Ramesh Sippy, Shekhar Kapur etc etc are the names which have been taking us on the visual tours to show us their chosen stories and we have been enjoying these virtual rides sitting under mesmerisation of the over all phenomenon of the cinema. We have laughed and cried by seeing their films. Rather we have been re-living again and again all 9 rasas by watching …

JAAGO MOHAN PYAARE!

“It is very easy to criticise anyone’s work than doing the actual work”.

The old and experienced players of hindi cinema…started their career by redefining the rules of typical bollywood film making. But some how lost their golden touches, cinematic abilities, and trapped in their own success and intelligence. They are thinking they are making right stuff and are with new generation of film making. But they might don’t know there are many dark horses trying to make films in their own way and if so called genius film makers would not wake out from dreams,…. they might go for long sleep.

* J.P. DUTTA- started with bang- Ghulami. But confined in his own brilliance. Prisoned in desert, thakurs and revenges(Batwaara, Kshatriya). Somehow reborn in Border but again captured in the same prison of long songs, wars and cross border issues. Umrao Jaan was like doordarshan serial. Though his …

Whenever you read or heard “Is actor ne us actor ke performance ko us film me kaccha chaba liya hai” means one actor has overshadowed another actor’s performance. What do you thinks at that time? Is it failure of actor?

Sometimes it is true, sometimes it is questionable.

Take example of Agneepath(1990). It was truly Amitabh Bachchan’s film. But you can not ignore Mithun’s performance. You can not say that Mithun performed badly. This is Director’s success that he knows how to balance characters on the screen irrespective of the lengths of roles of respective actors.

Take another example Deewar (1975)- Amitabh performed very well but you can not say that he over shadowed Shashi Kapoor’s performance. Director and writer succeeded in balancing of characters. On the contrary, take example of Darr (1993) where Shahrukh Khan’s performance overshadowed Sunny Deol’s performance though both have same lengths of roles. After watching the film …