Transcriber: Denise RQ Reviewer: Mary Kay
Good afternoon.
I guess I am the only thing that stands between you and the lunch,
so I am going to try and get through this as quickly as possible.
My topic today is "Сan cinema cause social change?"
I genuinely believe it can;
while it may not effect sweeping social changes,
it has the power to tell stories and even plant images in your head.
Storytelling is something that's existed since time immemorial,
and you know that stories have been
an extremely important way of delivering thoughts and ideas.
History is peppered with examples.
You have the Bible, the [Bhagavad] Gita, Qu'ran, Ramayana.
These are all great stories.
I mean imagine if Krishna stood on a podium like this
and told Arjuna what Dharma was; think Arjuna would have fallen asleep.
Take it on to the battle of Kurukshetra.
You have a blood strewn battlefield.
You have brothers fighting each other.
You have Arjuna - a truly cinematic moment -
putting an arrow into his bow, being about to unleash it
overcome by anguish.
And boom! We have the concept of Dharma.
So, stories have continuously done this,
they have used imagery to get ideas across.
The difference between cinema and most of the earlier forms of storytelling
is very simple: early forms were a two-step process.
So, when someone told a story to another person,
- which was the earliest form, a verbal form -
the listener had to listen and then form an image in his or her head.
We moved to books.
I see Ravi there; that's what he does for a living.
He puts words on a page, a reader reads it, forms an image.
Drama took it one step further: tried to eliminate some of those things,
but still, the person had to visualize the place.
And finally came movies.
Today, as we know it, by and large,
it's the most important form of storytelling,
because it works with the way our brain is wired.
We like images, we think in images; off the ground.
But "Dor", again, tried to do the thing
of breaking the Bollywood portrayal of strong women,
which is to portray them as these shrill, screaming vixens
standing and screaming at the injustice perpetrated by society.
And it is ironic, because they were reinforcing
the same gender inequality that they were fighting against.
And with "Dor", again, it was a very humbling experience
because of the offshoots that it had.
My most memorable one
was the fact that when the film screened at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.,
this tear-eyed woman walked up to me and said,
"That's the most beautiful lesbian love story that I've ever seen."
(Laughter)
I am serious. And I took that as a compliment.
Again, never intended.
But you know, people read what they want from a film.
Finally, it brings me to "Lakshmi".
With "Lakshmi" I actually had a very specific agenda,
no matter how many times I've said
"Entertainment first, story first, message later."
With "Lakshmi" I actually tried to approach it from the reverse.
Once again, the reason is deliberate:
to sort of jolt the audiences from the comfort of their homes
and actually take them to places where they haven't been.
About three and a half years ago,
I was invited by Plan India to talk at some conference,
which I really didn't know much about,
but most of the times, we're called
and just before we go on stage we are given a little briefing sheet
and for these 10 minutes, we pretend to be intelligent about the topic at hand.
And this was one such occasion, so I was doing my little bit, I went;
they were asking for some parliament to pass some bills.
So I went, I did my little bit,
and when I left, I met this rather interesting gentleman
and we got talking.
He said that he ran a little rescue shelter
in a small town in Andhra Pradesh.
He said, "If you have some time at some point,
I'd love for you to come down and visit."
And one thing that he told me
- an incident that actually changed his life -
sort of triggered my interest.
He said he was a journalist, and he was covering one such event,
- where there was a raid and they picked up a bunch of these sex workers
and they were bringing them -
and the hate unleashed on them by the public was so strong
- from the journalists, from the cops,
and from the general public as they walked -
that he couldn't fathom
how one human being could have that kind of hate for another
without actually knowing what they did.
You know, he just said this in broad strokes and he said,
"When you have the time I'd love for you to visit."
So eventually, out of curiosity more than anything else,
I went down there.
He runs a small rescue shelter outside Ongole in Andhra Pradhesh,
and I went there.
There were about 45 women,
and there were about 25 children in the place.
So I got talking with these women.
And what happened over the next two days
was something that pretty much changed my life.
When you are in the comfort of your homes - I'm no different -
and you sort of click images on the Internet,
you do a little [scrolling] and then you move on to the next one,
or if you are socially conscious, then you say,
"OK, I am going to forward this email to a bunch of other people."
Nothing wrong with that. All of these things are very essential.
But when you actually stand across from someone
who has gone through stuff that I cannot even begin to describe,
tale after tale of absolute inhumanity emerged.
I kept listening to them; and at one point, you sort of grow numb
with you know, the tales that you are hearing,
but at the back of my mind I kept saying, "OK, I need to do something about this.
I need to shed the spotlight because this is the topic I care about."
But we, filmmakers, are very fickle.
There's that momentary burst of "Oh, we want to do something,"
then you go back, and the next cheque is cut,
and you move on with your life.
So this was no different.
Except, I met this amazing girl,
and in a very quiet voice,
you know, she mumbled something.
I thought I didn't hear it correctly so I asked the guy. I said,
"Did I hear what she is saying?"
He said, "Yeah, you have no idea how courageous this girl is."
She was the first one in the state of Andhra Pradesh
to take her traffickers to court.
This is something they had been struggling for years.
They would rescue these girls, bring them to the shelter.
After few months of settling them, trying to heal their wounds
both psychologically, mentally, physically,
they would try to get these girls to go to court,
to stand as witnesses,
and none of them would have the courage
because of all the social issues,
they were threatened by the mafia and all this.
This girl, this unassuming, quiet little girl,
who just stood there in a corner, had actually done it.
And that was the first case in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
And that set a precedent.
And then, by last count,
there were 94 traffickers who had been jailed.
Yeah, I mean this is a story of heroism, and I said: "OK, that's my hook."
Like I keep saying, we've become so numb in today's time, especially to images,
I'm talking about the power of images
to change our thought processes and sort of instil amazing ideas,
but we become so numb to images that I felt,
instead of just giving you all statistics
I would take you all down a road which few people traveled.
The ones who have seen "Lakshmi", it is an extremely hard film to watch.
And I am going to address the women more than the men.
It is extremely disturbing.
Like a lot of people have said, there are many chunks of the movie
where your have your eyes averted from the screen.
Again, the reason is simple.
If I show you the journey that one little girl took,
I think I can do a lot more than just throwing,
you know, even at the beginning of this trailer it's said
44,000 children are abducted, 3 million sex workers,
these are just numbers; all irrelevant.
And that's how the journey of "Laskhmi" started.
Now, with "Lakshmi", my intention, both as a producer and director,
is absolutely clear.
Irrespective of what happens at the box office,
I want this film to travel.
So, what I have done specifically for this film
is, way before the release,
we started showing the film around college campuses.
And it has been one of the most gratifying things
that I have done in my life,
because the responses that we got,
the kind of spread of awareness through social media
and the reason that I attacked the colleges was very simple.
You guys are literally the last stage
before total cynicism sets in.
You are still not jaded to reject every good idea.
At least you will consider the idea,
and if, by chance, you end up liking it, champion it.
And that's why I started taking it to college campuses.
In addition, we started talking to NGOs to try and screen this.
Initially, I was a little hesitant because I felt
that girls who have been through this would not want to see
their own horror depicted on the screen.
So I was little hesitant.
But the response that I've gotten from a lot of the NGOs
is that this will actually inspire many more Lakshmis.
So this needs to be shown. So another burst of enthusiasm.
And the key thing with this whole process has been
I have never found a more potent tool.
I used to just constantly pass it off
as "Oh, this is good entertainment, this is good entertainment,"
but never once realized
that when you sit in the dark hall and these images play out,
what exactly goes on in your head
is something that's never been truly analyzed,
and I think that is something worth looking and studying.
I want to close with a wonderful little anecdote that happened.
Recently, we screened the film in Palm Springs,
and it was very interesting to see
an international audience react to the film.
I had many - and I am using the word carefully -
distraught women approach me and, you know, say,
"Thank you for putting the spotlight on a difficult topic," and blah blah blah.
But there was one woman
who just stood next to me and she couldn't talk,
and she just kept sobbing,
but she kept saying one thing over and over again.
She kept saying, "I need to do something."
"I need to do something."
And for me that was it.
I was like,"I think that's what a good film can do."
Good is subjective, I'll rephrase it: that's what I think a film can do.
Which is inspire the need to do something.
Thank you.
(Applause )