Michael Winterbottom, Trishna PROFILES
on Code 46, we were travelling around in Rajasthan. It just felt like there were a lot of aspects of the place at that time which were similar to the world Hardy describes. It is about rural communities
that have been very conservative, very fixed, very traditional, and then it’s the impact of new tech- nology, education, communica- tion. That’s what Hardy is writing about in Tess, and that’s very much what’s happening in India now.
Trishna
The prolific English director returns to TIFF, where he has shown many of his films includ- ing 2010’s The Trip, with his first India-set film, Trishna. Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and Riz Ahmed (Four Lions) star in the contemporary, relocated retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The d’Urbervilles. Bankside is selling.
Michael Winterbottom
What gave you the idea to update Hardy and bring Tess to India? When we were doing the recces
Gary Hustwit, Urbanized
New York City-based Gary Hus- twit presents the world premiere of his city design documentary Urbanized, the third film is his design trilogy after Helvetica (2007) and Objectified (2009). Two and a half years in the mak- ing (with final funding raised on Kickstarter), the film shot in more than 40 cities and interviews experts including Norman Foster and Rem Koolhaas.
This topic is epic in scale. How did you even decide where to shoot? We tried to look at different issues and specific projects that were addressing those issues. And looking at those issues in different cities to piece together a sort of composite city. We might look at traffic and
public transportation in Bogota, but by looking at a specific project we can explore more global impli- cations. We shot in 40 different cities. If
there’d been a major city in Ant- arctica, we would have gotten every continent.
What got you started thinking about the challenges facing cities? When Helvetica came out I went to 100 cities for the screening tour, and I did something pretty similar to that for Objectified. So I think all that travelling and seeing differ- ent cities and meeting people who were designers and architects, that’s probably what got me so interested in urban design. People were doing some pretty
amazing projects. I was always interested in architecture, and I thought maybe architecture would be the focus of the third film, but I think architecture in terms of city building was much more compelling.
You’ve become a role model for film- makers who want to self-distribute and create more of a ‘roadshow’ con- nection with their audiences, as well as connecting with audiences online. Is that hard to maintain? It’s all part of film-making. I don’t draw a line between the creative side of it and the outreach and the touring and Twitter. The audience
n 38 Screen International at the Toronto Film Festival September 9, 2011
You also did an adaptation of Jude The Obscure. What is it about Hardy that you love? Tess and Jude are my two favourite books of his. He has stories that are tragic love stories, and he’s brilliant at showing they are very much individuals’ lives con- nected. And showing why they struggle to achieve the things they want to achieve.
How did you work with Riz and Freida? Riz’s character is brought up in England, so he could draw on what he knew already. With Fre-
helps me find great projects to cover. There are projects in Urbanized that directly came from people responding to my ques- tions on Twitter. Even going on the road and meeting people and talking to people after films is as much a part of the process for me as making the film. It’s like what I used to do with music, the touring is a huge part of it. I never thought about going the traditional distri- bution route.
Wendy Mitchell Gary Hustwit
ida, she spent more time going to learn about Rajasthan. She spent some time at farmers’ houses. I had worked with Riz before
[on The Road To Guantanamo] but this is the first time he’s done a romantic leading man kind of role; he completely stepped up. They were both great to work with, and the film is all about the two of them. Right from the beginning they seemed to con- nect.
How much of a Bollywood influence is there to the film? Hardy was telling stories not dis- similar to the stories that Bolly- wood tells. In Tess, one of the guys falls in love with her when he sees her at a village dance. So I took that idea, and dancing and film are huge in India. Trishna loves film, she loves
dancing, and when they go to Mumbai, Jay is trying to be a film producer. They are in that world on the fringe of Bollywood. We had four songs specially
composed for the film by Amit Trivedi.
Wendy Mitchell
Meeting room 12, fifth floor, TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King Street West, Toronto, ON, M5V 3X5
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Urbanized
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