Breakthrough
Bijon Dasgupta made his debut as an art director with Shekhar Kapur’s Masoom and the first film itself gave him the recognition and respect that he now enjoys within the industry. The realistic set-up of the film Masoom appealed to the then young directors, JP Dutta, Mukul Anand, Rahul Rawail, Ramesh Sippy and others. And they all worked with Dasgupta again and again.
Bijon had a huge issue with the way some of the settings were designed…he says, “Have you ever wondered why the sets of old films looked so unrealistic? A rich man’s house always had a staircase and a golden statue in the huge hall. A night club would have lights everywhere and a villain’s den would have all sorts of obnoxious looking machines. Whore houses looked larger than life. They looked unreal because the people who designed them had never visited these kind of places in real life. These sets were the result of mere imagination and hence they looked so unreal.”
Back to reality
Dasgupta strived to make his setup different and look as real as possible. So that the audience could relate to those places. He bagged big movies like Hum Apke Hain Kaun Gupt Dil, Umrao Jaan, Mr India and many others. He is not very happy with the opulence that Karan Johar’s films portray. “I quite disapprove of Karan Johar’s NRI films. How much of USA are you going to push it down our throats? 80% of Indians don’t relate to swanky and cola cans coming out of vending machines. India has so much to offer. Why go outside?”
Beyond movies
Dasgupta has not limited his talent to movies alone. He has designed some high profile weddings like the last one at diamond merchant Bharat Shah’s son’s wedding at the Wankhede stadium. He has also designed sets for FilmFare awards and Miss India beauty pageants. The design and décor of the famous Sahara city in Lucknow is done by Dasgupta. “I have designed sets for films, advertisements, plays, events, parties and everything else. And I sometimes jokingly say that the only thing I haven’t designed till date is a coffin,” he says jokingly.
Non-filmi background….
Dasgupta belongs to a Bengali family that ran a pharmaceutical business in Bangalore. “I hail from a very protective family and as a child was never allowed to watch films. If I remember correctly, until my 7th grade I hadn’t watched a single Hindi movie. The only movies I watched was the ones my school would screen for us.” It was a chance viewing of Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali that got him hugely interested in films. “That movie was very impressive. The feel of the rural Bengal, portrayal of poverty in that region, the costumes – all of it was amazing. And thereafter I became a movie buff and started bunking my classes to watch movies.”
Finding a Godfather
Family friend Zul Velani, who was a documentary film-maker, took keen interest in Dasgupta. Velani asked him to stop wasting money on films, instead he should buy and read interesting books on film-making. It was on Velani’s insistence that Dasgupta joined the Bangalore little theatre and started helping him in designing sets. “While working on these plays I met the German director David Horsebrow and started working with him as art director.” Very soon Dasgupta landed up with a job in Doordarshan as a head of the designing department. Dasgupta says, “I worked in Doordarshan for 9 years and got to interact with the creative people all over the country. It was my stint with Doordarshan that taught me to make and break sets in record time,a s we had just one floor to shoot all the shows. This training has immensely helped me,” he says. Later Dasgupta started working on ad films and it was during his ad days that he got the offer to design Masoom.
Changing the viewpoint
This fifty-plus gentleman likes to believe that he is one of the few people instrumental in changing the perception of the industry towards art directors. “Art directors were looked at as carpenters,”.
Currently working on a film, Power starring Sanjay Dutt, Anil Kapoor, Emraan Hashmi and Kangana Ranaut, Dasgupta mourns the lack of opportunities that are coming his way. “I miss out on good projects as the younger directors consider me too senior and think that I may not be able to adapt to their ways. But well, I am sure I can.”
The talented man, however, is not waiting for too long. He says, “Right now, I am concentrating on directing two films and hoping that I get financiers soon.” We hope too. If nothing else, those films are going to look spectacular.
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