An interaction with the filmmaker, who is revered by cinephiles across the globe. Christopher Nolan talks about cinema, celluloid and his choices in filmmaking
Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; April 2, 2018)

Chris Chris, Nolan Nolan… diehard fans chanted this slogan in unison, (an ode to his Dark Knight trilogy) at the special Mumbai screening of Dunkirk (in IMAX 70 mm) on Saturday. As the sounds echoed in the theatre, the much-acclaimed director remained calm and collected. He playfully pointed out that the screening got sold out also because ‘it is a good film’.

The British filmmaker Nolan loosely reminds you of a more casual version of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Reynolds Woodcock in Phantom Thread — a genius singularly focused on his job, avoiding any sort of distraction. You can sense his simmering impatience underneath a Zen-like exterior. Stalwarts like Kamal Haasan, Shah Rukh Khan, A R Rahman and Rajkumar Hirani all thronged to meet the filmmaker and that just speaks volumes about his popularity in India.

Nolan’s extreme focus in times of digital clutter is noteworthy and perhaps explains why he doesn’t use a cell phone even today. Films like Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight trilogy and the latest Dunkirk, are just a reflection of his passion for the craft and his ability to bring an uncanny psychological depth to the stories he tells. He awed the audience during his first press interaction in India, held in Mumbai for film preservation and restoration, a common cause supported by Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, filmmaker and founder of the Film Heritage Foundation.

Nolan has been a strong advocate of celluloid along with filmmaking giants like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, JJ Abrams, to name a few.

While sipping on his must have (Earl Grey) tea at regular intervals, he explains why the choice of shooting on film should be made available to filmmakers. Whether they then choose analogue or digital depends on how they want to tell their story but they cannot be denied the right to choose. Excerpts from an insightful conversation...

You don’t use a cell phone or even an email. Will we see that changing since we live in a digital age and social media is big, today?
This way I don’t have to worry about my Facebook data (smiles). I am not interested in that side of life actually. We may live in a digital age, but we live in an analogue world. One of the things we all love about celluloid film is that it’s a very good analogy for, the way I see it, having a relationship with real life. Digital doesn’t have that. So analogue remains a powerful storytelling tool. I don’t have a cell phone but I don’t think that is relevant to my choice of medium, they are two different questions. One of the problems with digital semantics, which Tacita (Dean) and I talked about a lot, is that the word digital is essentially meaningless at this point in our culture. What does that even mean? It’s used to describe everything, and everything uses digital technology. My films use massive amounts of digital technology. Tacita in her presentation yesterday, talked about how she uses digital technology to make the masks that go into her camera, that then allows her to do multiple exposures on celluloid films. We all use digital in this and in that, but it doesn’t really mean anything.

Not everyone who watches movies might have the ability to tell the difference between film and digital format. How would you explain this to a common man?
Well, this question is always asked in an invalid way because you ask people to quantify something that they are not technically knowledgeable enough to quantify. The point isn’t that you can or cannot tell the difference between film print and digital. The point is what do you enjoy watching? Those of us who work in the filmmaking profession see different formats every day, most of the people I talk to fully understand it. You just enjoy watching a film print more. It’s more emotionally involving, fun to watch, immersive and nicer to look at. So trying to apply rigorous technical logic to it is beside the point. That thought is often used by people promoting digital technology, they say that people can’t really tell the difference.

Quentin Tarantino said in an interview that, “If I can’t shoot on film, I will stop making movies.” He even described the digital projection at Cannes as the ‘death of cinema’. Do you share that sentiment?
It’s more important for me to present myself as a practical filmmaker, more than what I think, Quentin cares about. But the reality is, he told me the very same thing several years ago and when I heard it, I realised that it would be very difficult for me as well, to muster any enthusiasm for getting up early in the morning and going to work if there wasn’t a real film camera on the set.

You are considered to be a traditionalist who continues to support film as an art form, while your movies are quite futuristic. How do you deal with the two contrasting thought processes?
I am not alone in this endeavour. There are various allies and tremendous filmmakers who love to shoot on film. Film is a medium. It’s a way of telling a story. You can use it for whatever you want it for. For example, in Dunkirk we tried to tell a story in an ambitious and different way using interesting structural techniques, so that’s also relevant. Traditionalist in terms of working methodology? To me that is a technical question, it’s not an artistic question.

Steven Spielberg made a political statement through his movie The Post. Do you also feel the need to do the same in the Donald Trump era, since you are also a powerful filmmaker in Hollywood?
No, I am more instinctive in my choices. I just make a story that grabs me.

How familiar are you with Indian cinema?
I have watched some Indian films, not enough though. I have enjoyed whatever I have seen. I intend to watch and discover more. This was part of the reason why I wanted to come here. I wanted to meet people from the Indian film industry, which is one of the biggest film cultures in the world and I am excited for it. We were in India before, very briefly to shoot The Dark Knight Rises and it’s exciting to be back and to be able to spend more time here.

One of world’s finest filmmakers makes a feverish pitch for ‘film’ projection, preservation; Bollywood biggies line up to listen
Mayank Shekhar (MID-DAY; April 1, 2018)

Like with his films, one could go back and forth, and back again, chatting with Christopher Nolan, the master-director, who first made his name with Memento (2000), and upped the ante thereafter with Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-12), The Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), and most recently, Dunkirk (2017). On his maiden visit to India however, Nolan stuck to a set script: speaking primarily on the production, projection, and preservation of celluloid (the medium in which we’ve always caught movies), as against digital (how most movies are currently shot, and watched — even on the big screen).

It was Nolan’s part-time role as a film activist that drew Bollywood’s A-list — Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan onwards — to a close-door meeting at the Yash Raj Studio, where the filmmaker made a strong case for both exhibitors, and studios, to at least allow the “invariably superior, photo-chemical film” as a choice to shoot, and project cinema in.

Nolan doesn’t make much of digital being simply a cheaper medium for cinema, arguing that one “can’t cut corners (with the medium)”, while being okay with spending far more on stars, or locations, anyway. And besides, he said, every call in filmmaking — right from casting, to the stories — is “led by emotion.” Evidently responding to Nolan’s impassioned plea, at least two cinematographers, Sudeep Chatterjee (Padmaavat, Dhoom 3, Chak De India), and the veteran, Santosh Sivan (Dil Se, Asoka, etc), promised to shoot their next film on celluloid, rather than go digital.

From the audience’s perspective however, and in the particular case of India, that is geographically spread out, with several remote corners, what the replacement of print with digital did was make a movie accessible to every theatre simultaneously, rather than a staggered release, that were once the norm — given physical transportation of prints.

Reacting to this observation, Nolan told mid-day, “Theoretically, that could be an advantage. But I don’t see why anybody would care about that. You ( as an audience) don’t have to carry prints. You just turn up (to the theatre). In the same way, no one looks at Amazon as being old-fashioned, because they use mail-service to deliver. It’s just about logistics. I don’t know much about the distribution system in India. But the network in the United States is one of the most magnificent operations ever. We could distribute 15,000 prints across the world, with films releasing at the same time. I don’t think anyone should take pride in getting rid of that, and replacing it with highly compressed digital signals. You shouldn’t care that it’s easier for me to shoot with a smaller, digital camera than a big one, either. What you should care about is whether you get your money’s worth while you’re watching a film — as against how difficult it was for me to make it, or for Warner Bros to move prints around.”

As for films also being at the cusp of what is being touted as a dramatic revolution, what with virtual and augmented reality aiming to provide immersive experience that might be hard for traditional cinemas to replicate, Nolan told mid-day, “With a lot of new technology, there is a moment of confusion over how one can frame them in terms of existing media. At the end of the day, (the new technology) finds its own path. Unlike ten years ago, I don’t get asked about video games anymore.”

Which is in line with how technologies don’t always follow a linear pattern, in terms of disrupting, destroying older ones. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, film preservationist and founder, Film Heritage Foundation — who’s brought down Nolan for much-needed cinema evangelism — highlighted, for instance, how tickets for special screenings in Mumbai of Nolan’s Dunkirk in the original 70 mm format, and Interstellar, in 35 mm, got sold out in 10 minutes of their announcement online. “They’re also good films,” Nolan interjected.

Of course.

Emma Thomas (Christopher Nolan's wife), Shivendra Singh Dungarpur (film preservationist), Tacita Dean (visual artist) and Nolan


Hollywood director in conversation with filmmaker Shyam Benegal

(Above) Satyajit Ray wields his 35mm film camera on actor Utpal Dutt; (Right) Christopher Nolan shot his Oscar-winning Dunkirk on a 65mm film camera

Old School Film Scores Over Digital Tech In Aesthetics, Preservation & Discipline
Mohua Das (THE TIMES OF INDIA; March 25, 2018)

Ravi K Chandran seems a little wound up. The ace cinematographer is contemplating the shifting sands of the film industry — particularly the relentless feed of new digital film formats. “All this change in technology every few days has enabled new possibilities. Anyone can film anything anytime at the press of a button,” he says, “but there is a difference, the kind you can sense between home-cooked food and fast food or between a Rembrandt oil painting and its digital printout.”

K U Mohanan, who wowed cinegoers with his camerawork in Don, Talaash and Miss Lovely, reminisces about the old-fashioned reel-to-reel film he used since he picked up his first camera as a student at FTII in Pune. “There’s romance, magic and something natural in the image captured on film.”

You hear such musings quite often in Bollywood these days. For more than a century, their world was ruled by celluloid—the medium on which movies were shot, processed and projected in theatres until about a decade ago when the digital wave turned grains into pixels.

Cans and reels have since been replaced by hard drives and digital files; while classic hallmarks of cinema-grains, flicker, and drone of the projector—are rapidly becoming antique.

The Indian film industry, whose cinematic heritage of 135 years is based entirely on analogue prints, witnessed a digital revolution in the past decade with 85% of films going digital in 2012. It was the same year that Prasad Film Laboratories, the largest chain of post-production facilities in India, shut its celluloid-processing units and rebranded itself as a pioneer in digital services. Eastman Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection and Fuji stopped selling negatives and 35mm film stock. Today, India is among the first few countries to have completely broken away from its analogue past.

What changed was not only the making but also showcasing. Instead of lugging around kilos of film cans across halls, they could be transferred to a disk or wirelessly. New releases could hit hundreds of screens at a go and enter the Rs 100-crore club while independent filmmakers could afford small-budget films. Digital tools made risk-taking easier in terms of techniques and touching up scenes.

Yet, senior cinematographers are almost desperate now to bring celluloid back. Sudeep Chatterjee, the man behind the lens for films such as Padmaavat, Bajirao Mastani and Dhoom 3, is not anti-digital. But he says film—his “favourite medium”—should be an available choice. “Today there are digital interventions—graphics and visual effects—at every level. But not every movie requires it. In such cases, why shouldn’t film be available?”

“In India, we’ve never had a culture of preserving our past while leaping on to something new. Age-old cameras, scanning machines and projectors are being junked. Big companies such as Arriflex have stopped making film cameras. It’s unfair for India to discard its time-honoured format for something still in its infancy,” says Mohanan.

Chandran, known for his visual metaphors in Tamil and Hindi films such as Kandukondain Kandukondain, Yuva and Dil Chahta Hai, talks about aspects of traditional film that a digital one would not be able to recreate. “Film is a chemical process in which light enters the lens and hits the negative. The chemical reaction creates rich hues, light and shade dynamics, and dreamy textures that go missing in digitally regimented visuals.” These lensmen also believe that limited film stock breeds discipline and rigour on the sets. “The sanctity of a shot is gone when one knows they can indulge in a flurry of takes,” adds Chatterjee.

Archival durability in the time of constant upgrade cycles is another growing concern. “Something stored on your floppy disk cannot be played anywhere anymore; 1K and 2K cameras have no value now while film format cameras from the black-and-white age can still be used,” says Chandran.

Anyone who has ever suffered the heartbreak of a hard drive crash or tried to watch home videos recorded in a now obsolete device knows of the dark side to digital storage. In two reports titled The Digital Dilemma published successively in 2007 and 2012, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences raised concerns about the longevity of digital material. Although archives surveyed for the reports showed that unlike traditional motion picture film stock that can be stored at proper temperatures and humidity, long-term preservation mechanisms to maintain access to digital content for 100 years or longer had not yet been developed.

This perhaps explains why some reactionaries are gearing up to preserve celluloid in India steered by filmmaker and archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur who set up the Film Heritage Foundation in 2014 to protect India’s decaying film heritage. Dungarpur’s efforts and the cinematographers’ wish might get a shot in the arm given that Hollywood stalwart Christopher Nolan is making overtures to the country’s film fraternity.

After bringing together professionals from art, film preservation and cinema to discuss steps needed to protect the medium of film and reposition its importance in an aggressive digital market in Los Angeles, London and Mexico City, Nolan and Tacita Dean, visual artist and founder of Save Film, a movement petitioning Unesco to safeguard the medium of film will be in Mumbai next weekend to dwell on the need to preserve photochemical film and keep it available for future generations. “Getting rid of celluloid is like getting rid of the grandmother. It’s not about choosing one above another but the need to co-exist. Hopefully, Nolan and Tacita, who wrote to me wanting to come and support our film heritage will draw our industry’s attention,” says Dungarpur, just back from a rescue mission of resuscitating 30,000 film reels in Sri Lanka. “This was possible because of the stability celluloid has achieved since 1895 when the Lumiere Brothers showed the first film.”

Celluloid is staging a comeback in Hollywood; some of the nominees at this year’s Oscars—Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, The Post, I, Tonya, and Call Me By Your Name— were mainly shot on film, not digital cameras. “I’m so glad that veterans such as Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino are sticking to film. I wish we could do the same here,” says Chandran.

Filmmaker-archivist Shivendra Singh Dungarpur hopes to draw attention to the importance of celluloid by screening Christopher Nolan’s most recent magnum opus in 18K next week
Kunal Guha (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 23, 2018)

Christopher Nolan designed Dunkirk with IMAX in mind — capturing a large portion of the film with IMAX 15 perforation/65mm film cameras, the highest-resolution cameras in the world. And the screening of the film, presented by Nolan himself at Carnival Cinemas IMAX, Wadala, on March 31 as part of the fourth ‘Reframing the Future of Film’ hosted by Film Heritage Foundation in India, will offer the very experience he envisioned. “In India, we have come from 70mm films such as Sholay and Razia Sultan which had five perforations. But the camera which Chris (Nolan) shot with has 15 perforations. He is giving you 18K instead of 4K. It is an opportunity to watch Dunkirk in the resolution the director intended to be experienced,” explains Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, Director, Film Heritage Foundation.

For this unique screening, IMAX Wadala will be outfitted with an IMAX 70mm film projection system for which the projectors are presently being refurbished. Nolan’s Interstellar will also be screened the same day at the art-deco theatre Liberty Cinemas and the film’s print is currently being shipped from Philippines by Warner Bros Pictures. “Nolan will be present for both screenings. After presenting Dunkirk at 6 pm, he will be at Liberty for the 9 pm show of Interstellar,” informs Dungarpur, excitedly showing a photograph of the 265kg delivery he recently received from Warner Bros Pictures — the film reels of the British filmmaker’s latest blockbuster. In an official statement, Nolan said, “The opportunity of showing Dunkirk on 70mm IMAX film, the way it was originally shot, gives us an exciting way to engage the Indian film industry in an exploration of the distinctive qualities of this universal medium.”

On the first day of the three-day event, visual artist Tacita Dean will speak at the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum on how celluloid film can be placed in spaces such as museums. “If you look at statistics, till 2014, we were still censoring on celluloid. Celluloid isn’t a thing of the past and several regional films continue to be shot on it,” says Dungarpur, adding that there will also be a discussion on setting criteria for best practices in film preservation on the second day.

A roundtable has been organised where Nolan and Dean will address 35 industry biggies such as Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Kamal Hassan, Mani Ratnam, along with cinema exhibiters such as Ajay Bijli of PVR Cinemas, museum heads like Sabyasachi Mukherjee and Tasneem Mehta and cinematographers like Sudeep Chatterjee and Santosh Sivan.

On the third day, a public forum will be held at NCPA in Mumbai where Dungarpur will be in conversation with Nolan and Dean about reframing the future of film. “It will be a dialogue on how celluloid can co-exist with digital, various challenges of working with celluloid films and why it is important to preserve them,” adds Dungarpur.

Speaking of the dialogue he intends to lead, Nolan added, “Tacita Dean and I are thrilled to be bringing our discussion about the future of photo-chemical film to one of the most passionate and vital centres of film production in India.”

Some of the issues to be covered at the forum include reimagining films as a medium rather than technology, strategies for the co-existence of film in the digital age, the need to invest in future photochemical research and development, strategies to encourage film projection in festivals, getting distributors to lend prints to cinemas and museums that are purely digital, among others. “We need to make good film projection a cultural and financial asset by reinventing it as an experience. This has been recently successfully achieved by the 70mm projection,” adds Dungarpur.


The film reels weighing 265 kg delivered by Warner Bros Pictures for the screening

A round table with Indian cinema’s biggies like Amitabh Bachchan and Kamal Haasan, 70mm screening of Dunkirk and a discussion on film preservation are on the cards...
Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; March 21, 2018)

Christopher Nolan will be in India soon. Accompanied by his wife, film producer Emma Thomas, the Oscar-winning director-screenwriter and one of the most critically and commercially-acclaimed filmmakers of our time, known for his distinctive cinematic style (Dunkirk, Inception, Interstellar, The Dark Knight trilogy, The Prestige and Memento), will arrive in the city on March 29 and be here till April 1. On March 30, there will be a private dinner hosted in his honour. After completing his work commitments, he will head to an undisclosed destination in India to explore the country. To those unaware, Nolan had shot a key sequence of The Dark Knight Rises in Jodhpur.

PURPOSE OF THE VISIT
Nolan’s primary reason for making this much-awaited visit is his passion for shooting on film. One of the strongest voices to advocate the necessity of using film over digital technology and preserving the photochemical film in the digital age, Nolan and visual artist Tacita Dean along with the Film Heritage Foundation, founded by filmmaker Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, will present ‘Reframing The Future Of Film’, a global initiative that supports the cause of film preservation. Directors like Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and many others swear by the traditional 70mm (wide high-resolution film gauge that was once used to make classics like Lawrence Of Arabia, 1962). In an earlier interview, the director had said, “I have been a long-time proponent of film – particularly the IMAX film format — as a storytelling medium. The immersive quality of the image is second to none, drawing the audience into the action in the most intense way possible.”

INDIAN ACTORS AND ARTISTES IN ATTENDANCE
Around 35 renowned Indian artistes and influencers from the world of cinema, art and preservation will meet Nolan and Tacita on March 31. Amitabh Bachchan, Aamir Khan, Kamal Haasan, Mani Ratnam, Farhan Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Shyam Benegal and Santosh Sivan, to name a few, will have an elaborate two-hour discussion with the Dunkirk director. Shah Rukh Khan is also likely to be a part of this gathering.

NOT PURSUING NOLAN!
Interestingly, contrary to popular belief, both Nolan and Tacita were not pursued by Shivendra; it was the other way round. Nolan’s team wrote to the Indian filmmaker about how they wanted to support his cause of preserving the film in the digital era. Shivendra reveals, “It’s an honour that Christopher Nolan and Tacita chose and acknowledged the work of our foundation. This will help more people to join in and support the cause.” Sources claim that the British filmmaker hasn’t charged a penny for himself or his entourage, if any. Meanwhile, Nolan said in a statement, “India has such wonderful cinema and rich history of art that everything needs to be done not only to encourage its proper preservation for future generations, but also to reintroduce the film medium to the younger artistes and filmmakers in the country.”

SPECIAL SCREENING OF DUNKIRK
Nolan will be present to introduce the special 70 mm IMAX film screening of the Academy Award-winning film Dunkirk in Mumbai for the first time. Special arrangements have been made to refit 70 mm projectors and the screen, and to ship the print to India from the US, especially for this onetime screening.

Dunkirk is an epic war drama and unlike any other World War film that I have seen. There are three major tracks in the film and although they run parallel, they cover different periods of time (Christopher Nolan after all!). This however provides a great cinematic experience and only Nolan could have pulled it off. The movie is just 106 minutes long and the short duration also helps in keeping the viewers engrossed and making the maximum impact. The non-linear narrative however also gets a bit complicated at places and it takes a while to get a hang of things. Also, the film moves too swiftly at certain places. Fionn Whitehead gives a fine performance and his boyish looks add a lot. Mark Rylance is terrific as always while Tom Glynn-Carney gives a fine performance. Tom Hardy comes out as the ‘hero’ with his restrained performance and a great character that he gets to essay. Hans Zimmer’s music score as expected rocks big time. Hoyte van Hoytema’s cinematography is award-worthy, especially the airplane scenes. Go for it and if possible, watch it in the IMAX screen!

My rating - **** out of 5!