Rohini Hattangadi and Govind Nihalani steal show at PIFF forum

PUNE: Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) could not have invited better speakers to open the PIFF Forum in keeping with the theme of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary. Both Rohini Hattangadi and Govind Nihalani had acted in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi.
Hattangadi had played the BAFTA-winning role of Kasturba Gandhi, while Nihalani was the second-unit cinematographer.
Hattangadi, who recently played a part in a film helmed by a FTII student, spoke fondly of how she was selected by Attenborough.
“When Sir Richard, he was Lord Richard by the time he passed away, selected me to act in the film, I was obviously thrilled. I had only done three films till then, and I didn’t really know the magnitude of Gandhi. There were others in the running, like Bhakti Barve and Smita Patil, to play Kasturba. But Sir Richard somehow selected me for the role,” she said.
She said her training at the National School of Drama (NSD) in the early 1970s and by legendary thespian Ebrahim Alkazi helped her to essay the role.
“Theatre has to be basic for any actor. That is where creating and thinking a character happens in a wholesome way. Alkazi sahab was a complete teacher. He never praised too much or criticised anybody but imbibed the basic discipline in actors. For example, I was part of a crowd scene at a NSD production, and he asked us to write a character analysis of each of our roles. But crowd scenes aren’t supposed to have elaborate characters. Alkazi sahab simply asked us to create one,” Hattangadi reminisced.
The professionalism that Hattangadi and Nihalani saw in Attenborough’s crew was also something novel to them. The former said that the “ho jayega” attitude she has witnessed in film sets over the years was completely missing. Nihalani commended the late director’s way to mitigate conflicts.
“There was some friction between the British and Indian technicians on set. And one such matter went to Attenborough. He told the people who complained that if one is insulted, one must confront on the spot. Thereafter, there were no issues between the crew members,” Nihalani added.
In nearly all of Nihalani’s films, social issues have never been too far from the screen, be it Aakrosh or Ardh Satya. When asked about the recent row over Nayantara Sehgal’s exclusion from the 92nd edition of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan at Yavatmal, he simply said that these, and other issues, are signs of a dynamic democracy. “Our country is a dynamic democracy, which is constantly evolving, like time, which is not static. We are going through that phase of evolution right now, which is most important,” he said. He credited some of his legendary collaborators for their contribution to his films
“What writers like Vijay Tendulkar and Satyadev Dubey did for my films to turn out the way they did is simply outstanding. All young film students should read that film’s script, on how to condense a life in less than three hours,” he said.