Vimukthi Jayasundara Director of Chatrak

What is the main theme of your new movie?

It is about the urbanisation of Asia. The main character is an Indian architect, who has been working in Dubai for a long time and is now coming back to his own country to work on those new, incredible, huge constructions in Calcutta. He left India to make more money, to be part of the modern world and he didn’t really imagine coming back again. India was in a different shape when he left and is now totally changing, becoming a more modern country. He has difficulties finding his roots, feeling guilty of having been away from his country. There is a gap between the past and the present which also shows in Calcutta’s architecture itself: On one hand the ghostly looking colonial buildings of the past, on the other hand the modern concrete architecture he helps to build. He wants to materially help the people. But in order to fulfil his duty and support his country, he eventually destroys nature.

Would you say Mushrooms is different from your former movies or is it similar in terms of storytelling and film language?

Well, it is the first movie I shot outside my country. In my other movies I was used to an open landscape. We mostly shot in remote areas and not in urban locations. But in Mushrooms, Calcutta, a contemporary city, is the main character of the movie. In my other two movies I constructed my own reality, my own imaginary world. But for this movie I had to accept the real world. Capturing urban reality was one of the challenges I faced. Normally I like to take long shots. When you shoot in nature you have to have a sense for the mood and specific rhythm and you have to be humble in relation to the landscape. In this case that was not possible and I wanted to change the style. Shooting in the city is totally different since the city is constructed by us. This changes matters of time and space.

How was shooting in Calcutta?

It was not easy to shoot in Calcutta. Most of the Indian movies are being shot in studios, so people are not used to movies being shot in the streets. All kinds of people were coming to see the Indian stars. We often had to play some kind of “hide and seek” in order to shoot without interruptions. So the crew separated, we put up fake stars and drove away with a small car and a camera. Sometimes the crew members themselves didn’t know if the shooting for the day was already done or not.

Do you think that people who know your former movies will be in some way surprised?

I like to keep it as a surprise. It gives me pleasure to try different things and to change myself. Keep open to anything that comes. I don’t want to be put in a box and be labelled. Of course I will always keep my past but I also try to change.

Why is it called Mushrooms?

At the very beginning there was a lot of irritation about the title. But now everybody is happy about it because it makes sense on several levels. On one hand, the movie is like a trip, a hallucination like the ones you can have after eating mushrooms. It is about a different state of mind. And on the other hand the film is about this “Mushroomian” building in Calcutta. The mushroom is also a good metaphor for a kind of living being without many roots. It just needs few conditions to grow and it appears and disappears very easily. So in the end the title has three different meanings.

How long did the filmmaking process take from the idea of the film until the editing?

It came very unexpectedly. I was working on another film when the idea came up last year. I hadn’t actually planned to do it. So we started to shoot in October / November and were finished after 30 days of shooting, with hardly any break. In comparison to my other movies, which took about one and a half to two years, this was quite different. The shooting was rather difficult because the movie constructs itself around morning, midday and evening and we often got up at 4 am in order to continue with the same light.

Are there already plans for future projects?

I have been working on a couple of projects in the last two years and this just came in between. A film in Sri Lanka is in production right now. Also I’ve been approached by US producers to make a mainstream American movie with American actors.

By Anne-Sophie Meusburger