INTERVIEW: Slumdog Millionaire co-director trusted instincts

Jul 10, 2009, 2:08 GMT

   Mainz, Germany - Despite co-directing the Oscar-winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, Loveleen Tandan remained modest this week as she spoke at a festival in Germany about the film's creation.

'I still consider myself a student, because in our business you are always learning something new,' the Indian cinema celebrity said in an interview in Mainz.

The most important thing she learned during the 'unique project' of making Slumdog Millionaire was 'to trust your own instincts,' she told the German Press Agency dpa

   It was Tandan's instinct that led to her promotion from head of casting.

She advised director Danny Boyle to shoot parts of the film in the Hindi language, not English.

'If they speak English only, the soul will go out of the characters,' she explained. She said she was amazed that he was convinced. In fact he was so impressed by her approach that he promoted her to co-director.

The film revolves around the slums of Mumbai, the Indian megacity, and the life of a youth who wins fabulous riches in a TV quiz show, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

Tandan recalled how she hunted 'everywhere' for children to play the role.

'At the beginning, the kids had just no idea what I was talking about,' she said.

Asked by dpa if the film, which employs real slum-dwellers as child actors, exploited the people of the slums, she said she had thought about that hard and long.

'The discussion has been going on in my head,' she said. 'We knew that acting in the film would forever change their lives. But the film changed all our lives.

'So I wondered if the chance to be actors would create an opportunity for them, or, if they were not given the chance, that would take an opportunity away from them.'

Tandan said she she still has 'very strong' links to the young actors from the slum, and noted that one of them obtained a new home a few weeks ago with help from the film producers.

'They had far fewer inhibitions in their acting than middle-class youngsters who were ashamed to do some of the scenes,' she recalled. But the film sets were like another planet for the slum children.

Asked if she expects slums to one day be a thing of the past in India, she is doubtful.

'Or course you hope that things will take a turn for the better. It was in the paper the other day that the government says there will be no slums left in five years. But that is probably utopian,' she said.

'We outsiders can't fully judge how it is to live in a slum. We believe our own lives are better, but it's the only life they know for people in the slums. That is their life.

I have never seen so many smiling people as I have in the slums. That's not a cliche. It really is like that,' she said, adding that this had altered her point of view.

'All of a sudden you feel so lousy when you contemplate your own life. We have so much of everything, but we are constantly complaining. And these people have nothing, but they just smile.'

   Tandan was also full of praise for the film's maker, Danny Boyle.

'He is amazing. He is full of vision, passion and energy,' she said. On the set he could be unrelenting.

'He just keeps going on. When I was tired and said, let's finish it for today, he kept on filming.'

Tandan, who was also casting director of the movies Monsoon Wedding and Brick Lane and has made documentaries, has a film of her own in planning and said the script was nearly written.

It is to be a documentary-style drama about the new generation in the Indian middle class. She said she has been strongly influenced by the directors Pedro Almodovar and Won Kar-Wai.

   She was special guest at a screening of Slumdog Millionaire this week in Mainz's Palatin Cinema as part of the Cool Britannia festival of British films, organized by the University of Mainz cinematography institute.