Ekta Kapoor: Eating Her Cake and Having it too…

Ekta Kapoor – from TV Serials to Edgy Cinema

Ekta Kapoor is a self-made millionaire and, as the head of Balaji Telefilms, she’s produced over 74 hugely popular television serials which are said to make up about 80 percent of television programming in India.  Recently the Queen of TV Soaps  was in town for the premiere of the gritty, fast moving ‘Shorr’ at the 2010 MIAAC Film Festival in New York. It is as real and as different as you can get from the sugar coated melodrama of the television serials steeped in tradition and changing social mores.

While the serials are produced under the Balaji brand, ‘Shorr’ and the even stronger and in-your-face ‘Love, Sex and Dhoka’ are produced by Alt Films, a division of Balaji Motion Pictures. So how does the same person create two very different world-views?

“Balaji is clearly a family,  traditional en masse content provider but there’s an underground movement happening in India and a new sensibility is being born – people want to see different films, different entertainment,” says Kapoor. “In order to not hurt the mother brand or in any way give conflicting signals, we decided to start an alternative brand called Alt Entertainment.”

While the new company’s first production was ‘Love, Sex aur Dokha’,  dealing with the sexual mindset in urban India, Kapoor decided to bet on ‘Shor’ for the second venture: “We wanted Shor to be pure noise-making, something that spoke more than just about the urban sexuality in India. It is about Mumbai – the city as it is today – not as it is glorified in Bollywood – but as it is today with all its color, its style, its duality.”

Ekta Kapoor on Cinema’s Changing Landscape

Ekta Kapoor says the last few years have seen a lot of independent filmmakers find their voice and it’s only going to grow, for as she points out, en masse entertainment has always been the staple diet in India but there’s always going to be a young, curious viewer out there who wants to see something where his sensibilities, his voice, his attitude is matched in film.

Indeed, ‘Shorr’ is very different from the serials which have been the trademark at Balaji. When I asked Ekta Kapoor about this about turn, she said, “Everyone needs to get out of their comfort zone sometime or the other and do something which is different, experimental, alternative. I have a young, urban sensibility, I live in Bombay and I’m a working woman.

I do television which is for masses but my personal sensibilities, personal thoughts have never had proper voice or proper expression; we wanted to make films which also have a sensibility match with us.”

She says that the young team at Alt is actually going to be a growing movement doing a couple of  independent shows, independent films every year which will probably not match the sensibility of Balaji,  which may be more all-India.

“But it will set up new ground, create new standards and break new barriers,” she says. “For me,  that is really important. I can do all that at Alt.  Balaji will continue to provide entertainment that doesn’t hurt the sensibilities of the main viewers, while Alt will question the sensibilities of all the viewers!”

“So you are going to have your cake and eat it too?” I asked.

“Hopefully. Yes, I hope so,” she said. Then added, with a  smile and deliciously,  deliberately, knowing I was on to her constant battle with the waistline: “I hope I have the cake, eat it – and not put on weight!”