Sanjay Leela Bhansali unveils 'process in making period drama films'

Filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali shares the process of while making period films. 

While talking to Mini Mathur, he said: “When you are working on a historical in our country, you have to be a little careful. So yes you need to get your facts right, and that is where my research ends. Because most of it is imagination, most of it is how I see the period. I do go and see the architecture, and I start dreaming of my own extra pillars, roofs, carpets. So research is done, but not detailed research. I find research very boring. As a filmmaker I am not set out to make a documentary. I want my impressions, child-like impressions, grown-up impressions, heartbroken lovers’ impressions… I want all that come to the film rather than documented research.”

Sanjay says that most of the films are based on his imagination because he finds research a boring process.

“Ya! Because if it is there in real then people have seen it in a documentary or in a series, but this is what they have not seen. So what is Devdas like? Obviously he is a literature character, but what are Bajirao or Mastani like? People have not seen Bajirao Mastani so I can take the liberty to do what I want. Nobody has seen them because it happened 300 to 400 years ago. So, what do I give them that makes them feel that they are seeing a film they connect to today. Fifty years ago it would have been a different film if we made Bajirao or Gangubai.

“ So there is a certain modern approach to the way you make a film, the audience has to connect to it. They have to relate to this historical or a period piece. Even Gangubai, I think it was a film set in the 40s and the 50s. I have lived next to the brothels for thirty years of my life, one lane away from the brothels. I knew in and out what those lanes looked like, smelt like, what are the faces like. So I had my research and the rest was imagination. You can’t keep going and copying, make notes, making notes bore me completely.”

The Ram-Leela director revealed people stopped him from making Gangubai Kathiawadi. “People told me not to make Gangubai. It’s a female-centric film, it’s a female protagonist. In India, they do not got a female-led subject. The box office has never worked. She’s playing a sex worker and then there’s no hero. All the tick marks you would put to understand the audience and the scenario, I have ticked all the wrong boxes. But it worked. That’s the belief, he concluded.”

Sanjay Leela Bhansali has dropped the first teaser of his upcoming film Heeramandi, reports IndianExpress.