Classic Cotton-Cinema exclusive: Ismail Merchant
all set to direct his first movie with his nephew as producer
By Anjali Rajagopalan and Shilpa Mathai
Nayeem Hafizka has just found a house in Kochi. "Well, you know, we make art movies and we have very small budgets but we could work something out about the rent," he tells an executive of the company that owns the house.
"That's all right," says the executive. "You can have the house for nothing."
"That would be fantastic," says Nayeem. "Of course we'll give you credit." Seeing the bafflement on the movie-unsavvy executive's face, he explains, "We'll put your name in the credits as an acknowledgment of what you've done for us."
Nayeem (left) has learnt his winning ways from his uncle Ismail Merchant, the wheeler-dealer of the art film world. Borrowing the house is a minor coup for Nayeem, who is producing his first full-length feature film, Cotton Mary, with his illustrious uncle as the director. As the cheeky half of the Merchant-Ivory pair, Merchant is known for his shoestring budgets and for stretching the penny like a spool of raw film.
The budget for Cotton Mary is as tight as its nine-week shooting schedule, with Merchant-Ivory Productions raising a modest one crore rupees. The story, too, has the unmistakable trademark of the cinematic twins: it is about the angst of people baking in cultural crucibles.
The story is by Alexandra Viets, a diplomat's daughter who spent part of her childhood in India and met Merchant after a reading of the story in New York five years ago. "I loved the story when I read it," says Nayeem. "It's so typically Merchant-Ivorian. It's all about human relations and human emotions."
Nayeem first met Alexandra in Paris, where she was living with her husband Jeffrey Coll, an American embassy officer. She was still working on the screenplay and Nayeem was in the thick of working on A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries, the latest movie from Merchant-Ivory. "She kept asking me, 'Is this going to happen?'" She was nervous since it was her maiden screenplay........
the-week.com
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