Exclusive interview with Ladly Mukhopadhaya, India Independent Filmaker and documentary film

By Jean-Paul Eliard
The 06 January 2025

Hi Ladly, I'm glad to do this interview 

What did you like when you read or you write a subject for a documentary or a film?

Ans: I have started writing at a very early age. I always had this in mind to write in the media, that I need to express myself in a cultural media.
That was how my journey as a writer began. After a certain period of time,
I realised that film is much bigger instrument than journals as it reaches to a larger number of people. Through film we can actually communicate with more people unlike writing. That was when I started thinking about making films.
So, at first, I started working as an assistant for so many directors.
They helped me to understand how this new medium works. I am a self taught man. I learnt from them persistently. I learnt the art of camera.
That was how I made my way to the Industry. And since then it has been four decades I have been in this profession.
But, besides documentaries, I have made feature films as well. I have worked on fictions, television serials, telefilms. I have made more than 60 telefilms which was quite popular back then.
But somehow, I think, documentary intrigues me more because there is no given context or artificial settings. And because of this, the whole thing becomes very challenging. You have to acquire this thing.
For example, suppose, I prepare myself for one thing to shoot but when we reach the spot, the circumstances are quite different from what I thought it would be.
Then I have to think from different perspectives, different ideas, take different shots from different angles.
And that is very challenging and this, the very idea of challenging something new, is what kept me motivated to make more and more documentaries over the decades.
When it comes to fiction, it is a ready format within proper settings and role playing and narratives where you already know what to do and what is going to happen.
It is all set there. But in case of documentary, nothing is prefixed. There is no fixed setting or dialogues or narratives. The circumstances can be very unpredictable and uncertain varying from moments to moments. And it’s all natura, devoid of any artificiality.

That’s why I love to take this challenge and shifted my focus from other fields of films to documentary. I have worked on more than 300 documentaries till day.

Where are shots your films, documentaries?
How are the shoots?

Ans: Basically situations drove me to take the shots. As I said before, in documentaries, there is no prefixed setting and situations can be very undefined, I have to go according to the situations. All you can have is a draft in your head.
You cannot expect to have all the things to fall into its own places. You cannot even make things ready for the shoot beforehand.
Everything depends upon the circumstances and subjects upon which you are keen to make the film. It is always unpredictable.
So when we go for a shoot as a documentarian, we have to set all the shot in accordance with the situation depending upon in which location we are planning to shoot, what we are planning to capture and project, what the themes are. Documentary is a compact method of manifesting lives, narrating events and projecting facts with such a short duration, that sometimes it becomes very difficult to execute all the plans we had, to take every shot as we expected.
I have an added advantage though, as I myself do the camera and the direction, I take every shot possible on the spot, on the very days I planned to shoot and on time.
As I singlehandedly manage both the camera and direction, it becomes very helpful for me to execute the thoughts in my head through the lens.

How did you choose your subject?

Ans: Well, if you ask what my favourite subject of documentary is, I would definitely go for the musical.
A large part of my documentaries are musical. Besides, I often make documentaries on the lives of the tribals. The sub-marginal lives and their culture are the part and parcel of my films.
So I aim to choose those subjects which have been escaped from the thoughts of people. My focus is to bring light to those things, those part of lives and their problems that are untouched by the majorities, by the civilized society.
I want to entertain the thoughts of people with these subjects, their culture and ethnicity, their music that are not heard or seen before.
For example, documentaries on the gypsies of Rajasthan or on the lives of baul-fakirs or on the tribes of Arunachal Pradesh are rarely to be found.
May be, you can find tidbits of them on YouTube, but not proper documentaries. These are the basic reasons that caught my attention to make documentaries on these subjects.
 

What is your next project?

My next project will be on the highways. Modern Highways are developed in the later years of India.
These highways are highly developed and have almost international standards. And the majority of its users are loaded trucks and lorries. You can say that all these highways are flooded with these trucks and lorries.

So, for the last few years I had been playing with an idea in my mind which
I had then discussed with some of the French channels but hadn’t been materialised unfortunately due to Covid situations and its aftermath. Lately,
I have started working back on this idea again.

What I have in my mind is the highway traffic and the life of these people who drive these trucks and lorries all over India. It can be a road trip documentary.

I want to portray the life of those truck drivers - their daily routine, day to day living conditions, their family and health and how they are coping up with present day economy and ever changing scenarios of India. That’s all.

Thank you very much for your interview Ladly and I wish you all the best.