Deconstructing The Senna Hegde Creative Process™

Deconstructing The Senna Hegde Creative Process™

The ace filmmaker tells Neelima Menon how he brings his evocative stories to life on screen.

GIVEN A CHOICE, Senna Hegde would make all his films in Kanhangad. With a Kasaragod father and Karnataka mother, hailing from a town that bordered between two states, he has always felt marginalised. Be it the topography or the language that alienated him from the rest of the state, Senna says making films set in his part of the world always gives him a sense of self. It’s his way of reclaiming a position on Malayalam cinema’s map with stories about people and a land that’s rarely documented. He wanted to bring focus on actors who haven’t had the opportunity to flex their craft compared to people from the rest of Kerala. He wants to be seen and heard, through his films.

That’s how Senna gave a spin to a seemingly done-to-death story of a family dealing with a wedding, a daughter’s elopement, and an egotistical father in a small town in North Kerala in Thinkalazhcha Nishchayam (2021). In hindsight, everything was familiar, just that he elevates the narrative by getting the topography right and seamlessly captures the nuances of a community, including the musicality of their local slang, the routine, conventions, occupation, food, and culture to their social conditioning. Senna lends it a signature that’s difficult to duplicate.

Senna who did Business Analysis and later worked in the ad industry for eight years admits that “he could figure out the theoretical knowledge more than on paper due to his ad stint”.

He always wanted to make one film in his lifetime. Since technology had not evolved as it is now, he felt the ad world was the next best option. In 2014, he quit his job and made a small-budget movie called O-41, based in a small town, with a backdrop of volleyball. He had a shoe-sting budget, a small crew, and a bunch of neighbourhood kids. Though it wasn’t released in theatres, the film premiered at the 11th 'Cinema on the Bayou' film festival in Lafayette. Anurag Kashyap shared the trailer and suddenly Senna felt himself being placed on the map of Indian cinema.

Read The Interview

Karan Johar's Return To The Cinema Of The One Percent

The pull and effectiveness of Johar’s cinema about the elite remains as solid in Rocky Aur Rani... as it was at the turn of the millennium, writes Manik Sharma.

THE Karan Johar world of family histrionics is back after a long time. It has a somewhat upgraded look and a decidedly woke underbelly, but it still answers to a familiar calling card — family is everything. Not for the first time, in a Johar film or at least one where he is involved, does a love-struck couple embalm the wound that family can come to represent. Unlike Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, Johar’s seminal exploration of familial friction, this time the battle takes place across families; cultural mores clash, eyebrows are raised and more specifically, differing ideas of masculinity go up against each other. One thing though, has remained common in the two decades separating K3G from his latest. Like most of his family feud cinema that espouses a soapy look and grammar, Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, also takes place in the economic stratosphere us mortals refer to as the ‘one percent’. Strikingly, despite the shifting sands of aspiration and accessibility underneath, the pull and effectiveness of Johar’s cinema about the elite, remains as solid as it was at the turn of the millennium.

OUR OTHER NEWSLETTERS

The one newsletter you need to decide what to watch on any given day. Our editors pick a show, movie, or theme for you from everything that’s streaming on OTT.

This weekly newsletter compiles a list of the latest (and most important) reviews from OTTplay so you can figure what to watch or ditch over the weekend ahead.

In which we invite a scholar of cinema, devotee of the moving image, to write a prose poem dedicated to their poison of choice. Expect to spend an
hour on this.