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NASREEN MUNNI KABIR: My name is Nasreen Munni Kabir, and I'm a documentary film-maker. I've written extensively on Indian cinema. And I also love and enjoy subtitling Hindi films

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into English. I have been researching and working around Indian cinema since the late '70s. I, like many other immigrant families living in the UK,

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would find going to an Indian movie on Sundays a very big treat. And it was, I'd say, the main connection with the homeland. It was the Indian films.

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It was food. It was the film. Songs that we bought records and brought home. So Indian cinema always played an important part

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in the life of Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis who lived in many other countries that were not their own and did not belong to the same culture. So when I started this research at the end of the '70s, I

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really did not find much material, because, till that point in time, there wasn't many-- I mean, there weren't many books written about the subject, and it was very, very difficult to access any research.

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So I was lucky that I could start by actually watching the films whenever they came here. Now, the '70s was the time of the VHS, so the VHS allowed you to watch the old films.

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And they were mostly pirated. Terrible, terrible quality, really. Some of them were really very bad. But nevertheless, you were connected.

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And then, on Sundays, downtime in cinemas, like, for example, if Odeon had a slot in the morning at 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the morning, if you were around in the '70s and '80s and early '90s,

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you would find a long line of Asians, South Asians, queuing up to see an Indian movie, especially it was an Odeon Marble Arch. There were lots of movies shown there, and so on.

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So, basically, the connection was cinema. When I started research, I wanted to work particularly on the 1950s of Indian film because I thought that was a very interesting period.

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It was 10 years after India's independence. And the cinema had really come into its own. There were really wonderful films being made. Unlike Hollywood, for example, Indian cinema actually could

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afford, in terms of budgets, and labs, and so on, only to make colour films in the '60s, whereas Hollywood was already making colour films. So you see, in the 1950s, Hindi cinema

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was mainly black and white. There were occasional-- in those days, what they would do is the whole film would be in black and white, but there'd be one particular song which would be

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in colour. And that was basically because they couldn't afford to make the whole film in colour. It was too expensive a process.

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But whatever it was, it was a really deep connection. So when Channel 4 came about in the 80s, I was very lucky to have met the first commissioning editor, Sue Woodford.

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And she wanted to programme Indian films. And Jeremy Isaacs, who, as you may know, he was the CEO of Channel 4, and they were very keen to show Indian films.

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So I got the job of curating, meaning, making a list of Indian films, subtitling them, and then, they would be on air. So Channel 4 actually showed Sholay on the first Boxing Day

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on 26 of December, 1982. And that was the first Indian film on Channel 4. And the response was amazing. We got hundreds of letters, lots of phone calls.

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And it was a real event that took place. We have to remember, I mean, now, we're talking today, in 2023, but we have to remember, back in a time when there was no YouTube,

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there was no satellite, there were no mobiles, and so your connection was very specific. It was broadcast television. There were four channels in those days.

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Now, I think there are 800. So whatever we did in terms of Indian cinema really connected with the audience. And out of that experience, I thought--

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considering research in the subject was so difficult, I thought it would be really wonderful to be in India and interview a number of film practitioners. I asked channel 4, and by then, there

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was another commissioning editor who really supported me called Farrukh Dhondy. He's a very well-known personality, a writer, and well-known in England, and I suggested to Farrukh

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that we make a series which would concentrate on the Indian film song. Why the Indian film song? Because, actually, I think music is actually

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at the heart of the film, of films. And I think it is actually the glue that keeps us connected and stuck onto the cinema, it's the music.

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And so I asked Farrukh, could we make a series which would interview-- I would interview many people, some about their lives and their work,

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and some just talking about songs. Out of this experience came two long series called Movie Mahal. And the interviews that Adam Matthews have are the interviews that were taken for Channel 4 for these

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programmes. Obviously, when you make a television programme, you can only-- I mean, you have to cut the interview.

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You can't have the whole interview. And so the Adam Matthews material has the entire interview, which means to say, anyone researching Indian cinema looks at the interview,

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sees these people who have created this work, and they talk about their experience, their opinions. And if I had that kind of a research material available when I started off, I would have been really

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very, very happy, and it would have advanced my studies enormously. I felt I was really having to find out everything, the very basics.

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These interviews are with the leading personalities of Hindi film. So you've got actors, composers, and various people talking about, not obscure films, very well-known films.

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Some interviews really concentrate on the songs, because I do believe they are very, very important to the Indian film. So if a student wants to find different subjects,

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like, for example, if they want to write about this famous director called Guru Dutt, I made a documentary on Guru Dutt, and these are the entire interviews

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of the people who worked with Guru Dutt talking about him. So it's a very, very useful resource material. Finally, if we look at books, and we see the interpretations of cinema, interpretations of films and film practitioners,

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it's really wonderful to be able to actually hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Because when a person is interviewed, they choose certain words.

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They are a certain personality. The camera changes everything. The dynamics change. However, it is very important to get into-- them, rather,

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into the subject. So your interviewing techniques have to be such that they forget the camera, if they could, and get into the subject.

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So why do-- I mean, how do you make them do that? You really research well before you meet them. So you know the kind of things that interest them.

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You know the kind of films they were involved with that meant a lot in their lives. So for example, when I interviewed this actor, a big, big star called Shammi Kapoor,

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and I talked to him about a song that he had performed which he was very, very enthusiastic-- about everybody knows that song. It was "Yahoo" from a film called Junglee.

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And you could see he really loved the experience of going back into that era. Now, today, on the net, and on let's take Facebook or Twitter, there's so much information, but for me, I

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find it's not terribly structured. It's really random and it has, my view, very little archival value. And if we see these same actors, today's actors,

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they could be interviewed 1,000 times, but I'm not convinced that these interviews are going to have an archival value 20, 30 years down the line. I'm not so sure.

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Now, if you interviewed Shammi Kapoor in 1986, and he's talking about a film that he did in 1962 or '61, the gap between the film and the time you interview him is not that long.

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But if you interviewed him in year 2000, for example, the gap is even greater. So you find two things happening. One is that their memory is going.

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And all of our memories are subjective, and they do disappear. So that, basically, if they've told that story of how that song was sung,

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they will repeat that story, just like a little script. But if you are closer to the time of the actual event, you find a very fresh interpretation. And I felt that the interpretation

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of their work in those interviews was very fresh because it was closer in time to the experience of that film. So the interviews have a certain freshness

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and a certain surprise. I remember when Movie Mahal, was on Channel 4. There was a number of viewers-- we had many, many viewers and fan letters, lots of fan letters, thousands of them

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came, and they would be very interesting stories. They'd say, oh, wasn't it wonderful to see that dance and see my cousin Tony dancing. So there were lots of lovely anecdotes.

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But also, people said to me that they did not realise that Indian film people were so intelligent and could analyse their work so much. Because there was a general hesitation, I would say,

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and it was a little bit apologetic about popular cinema. Today, popular cinema is the only thing. But in those days--

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we're talking about the '80s-- popular cinema was seen as likely less, whatever, kosher. Because somehow, they felt the independent cinema was more intellectual, and so on.

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And '80s was not a good time in Indian film production. So that didn't help. But I was very surprised how many people found-- being surprised by the intelligence and how they

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analysed their own work. So that was very, very heartening. I think the interviews-- I think, ultimately, you find what

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you need in the interviews. If I was to write a book and I saw 20 interviews, I will pick from those 20 interviews things that reinforce, underline what I want to say.

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So I'm very hopeful, and I'm sure that students will be able to pick from these interviews things that actually reinforce their own analysis and their own understanding of cinema.

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The questions that one asks these people are informed, and also, the artists love talking about their work. They don't like talking about their love affairs and what they're doing off screen.

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But their work, yes. And ultimately, that's what lasts and that's what matter. I was often accused of not having enough gossip in my programmes or the interviews, and very frankly,

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I'm very happy I didn't, because they would have dated. If someone was going out with ex-actress in 19, I don't know, 82, and then, by '86, he had married three other people, it would be dated.

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Whereas the film that he worked in would never be dated because it is of its time, and it cannot be altered. So therefore, things that can't be altered were very pleasing to me.

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And cinema, rather, the study of Indian cinema, has really expanded. People take popular cinema very, very seriously, much more than before.

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And I think that maybe I don't know exactly the date, but I think by the late '90s, or something around then, academics all around the world started studying popular cinema.

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And it became very popular in universities. There would be courses on Hindi film and Tamil cinema, and so on. So all this material was very useful because not everybody

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could have gone off to Bombay and interviewed these people. And the film clips in the programmes were very useful. Because, again, it was a time much before YouTube. I think today's generation cannot believe what it was like

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to try and find a film clip. You'd have to go to the Poona archives and request them to show it to you. Otherwise, you had no access to them.

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Today, you just go to YouTube. You type in the song, and there it is. And that accessibility is fantastic today. I think today, you have access to so much material and so much

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information. The question in the older material for me is it navigates you to looking for something beyond what you see.

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Now, if you see a film song on YouTube, and you go back to an interview that we did that you will see on the Adam Matthews package, you will find you've got a connection.

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And you've got a connection with the artist who actually performed it. So I feel that research comes in all kinds of ways. And there is nothing like research that's first hand.

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So in other words, the experience of doing those films, experience of performance is really what I felt we should record. And those interviews have all that.

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And I just think it was a great privilege, and, really, a great honour. And today, I feel really humbled that they allowed me access in the way they did.

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It is true that there weren't 800 channels in those days, and they were a little surprised that I even came from England and wanted to interview them. They were all very, very open to me.

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And I always felt that after the event, after they saw the programmes, they really liked the work. And that was a big reward to me. And I'm hoping very much that students also

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find many things in these interviews. And it is seeing and noticing things about the actor or the director that's really between the lines, between what they

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say is where you will find insight, and also, subjects for future studies. So I'm very hopeful that these interviews will be of great use to researchers.

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I think I was very, very lucky, because I started this research a long, long time ago. There were very few people-- there were a handful of people doing research on popular cinema

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living in the West. Obviously, in India, there were others. There was a director of the National Film Archives. He was the founder of that National Film Archive of India.

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He has passed away since. His name is PK Nair, Mr. Nair. He was very, very well-known in the archive and the circuit. And he was my guru.

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Because he taught me what it is to be rigorous about your work and not be judgmental about the films or film people. He thought that, in terms of being an archivist, which he was, everything has value.

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And the value is only established years to come. So when I started this work, I had no idea how and where it would lead. I must say, today, I've done maybe 22 books

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on Hindi film, many different books. Some of the students may have read them. These interviews and that experience allowed me to then go from documentary to books.

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Now, I think the position now is that-- I shouldn't say it myself, but people do take me a bit seriously. They like the films.

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They like the work. And the proof of that is when I want an interview, or I request someone for an interview, or that we should do a book project,

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they're very open to it. And I think that one of the programmes got me another programme. Because, for example, when I did a documentary

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on Guru Dutt, the director, Lata Mangeshkar, who is this extraordinary playback singer, had seen the documentary. And through a common friend, Sanjeev Kohli,

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she saw the documentary because she was in London at that time, and then, she said yes to me doing the film on her. Now, one of the biggest stars of Indian cinema, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, he saw my film on Manmohan Desai,

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this other documentary-- I mean, filmmaker, and Mr. Bachchan said, yes, you can do a film on me. So that's how you realise that people do like your work.

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And they saw in it not a judgmental thing, but something that was actually-- they reveal themselves. And I think I can still say that those interviews,

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they really opened up. They trusted. The heart of an interview is the trust you establish. And how do you establish that?

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Either by your past work, so they know more or less what you're doing, and they also trust you because you respect them. And you're not going to cross any lines

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and pretend as if you're equals, pretend as if you know it all. There's nothing more irritating than an interviewer who knows it all. Then why waste my time?

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So a lot of stars and all felt very at ease and felt that they had to look in themselves for new avenues of expression. And I thought that was my--

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I think my, if I had a real talent, was that. I gained that trust. And therefore, I think the books and the films, and now, the subtitling--

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I do lots of subtitling, and I love it, because it's a way of working with film shot by shot, working with film production companies that are current, like I just finished Pathaan, and another big film

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called Jaxan, and the whole experience is very interesting. Because you're working with people. You're still making something. Because I think subtitling can be quite creative.

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It's a combination of translation into English and editing. You have to know how to edit words, and you have to understand the editing pattern of a film.

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So the subtitle should be in sync with the editing and not disturb the edit. And the best subtitle is an invisible one. I haven't quite achieved that, but I hope one day.

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I think what happened, really, in the year 2000, Hindi cinema suddenly had this kind of-- became very trendy around the world. I wouldn't say the films became trendy, but more than anything,

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this word Bollywood became interesting. Because Bollywood was easy to remember, and it became like a password. If you asked a taxi driver, have you seen an Indian film?

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He said, ah, Bollywood. But he'd say, no, I haven't seen any. But the fact of the matter is, in India, it was coined by somebody in India in some kind of--

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I don't know. It's not seen as very complimentary. It's seen as the poor cousin of Hollywood. And Bombay was B in Bollywood.

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However, many, many people have objected to that term. The biggest stars, Mr. Bachchan always says he hates the term, and many people don't like the term. There is Hindi cinema.

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There's Tamil cinema. There's Indian cinema. There's various language cinemas. But why Bollywood?

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That said, it helped people to get a grasp on it. Because they imagined that they understood the formula. The formula was romance and songs and dances, happy endings, and so on.

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And many films are that. But I would say to apply it to the classics, the films of prior to the year 2000s would not be quite fair. Because, I mean, it's better to-- if you know the subject,

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it's better to know a director's work. You say, Mehboob Khan's films, Raj Kapoor's films, like you say Billy Wilder's films, Kurosawa's films, Fellini's films.

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You don't just say Hollywood when you mean Billy Wilder. So people who get to know the cinema are more discriminating. All that said, Bollywood is now a password more than anything. And it has, whether we like it or not,

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popularised the idea of Indian popular cinema. It's not the most flattering. I don't like using the term myself. But sometimes, it is, as I said, a password.

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Because otherwise, you have to do a lot of explaining. So therefore, that's what-- and once something becomes popular, and enters the cultural mix, you cannot bring it back. It's over.

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That's what it will always be known as. But I think the people who are more discriminating will call it Hindi cinema or Indian cinema, or by specific directors' names, as we do when we talk about--

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even today, you talk about Tarantino, you don't just say Hollywood. And now, you talk about Barbie. You know what I mean?

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You have to talk about specifics. If you generalise, then Bollywood is fine. When the students look at the material, what will they find that is of interest to them?

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I think they can, for example, if they're working on specific themes, they could talk about the film song. There's a tremendous amount of interviews about the film song. And then, about acting styles.

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You can hear the interviews of various actors, and then you understand. Then you have different directors, like Manmohan Desai, or work on Guru Dutt,

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or others where you actually can understand how they worked. So you have the scenes behind the scenes. Then, you've got playback singers and composers. You've got an interview with Anil Biswas, who is a very,

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very famous man, and Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and then, you've got interviews with people who-- Saroj Khan, who are choreographers, people who make the cinema.

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So if you talk about general subjects, you can get that information anywhere. But specifics, you will get it through interviews. I have found that is where you find--

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really, the heart of film making is through the interviews and through the experience of those who make those films. So I think those interviews actually lend to-- I mean, open the door to many subjects.

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And hopefully, students will find many ways of approaching the study of Indian film.