IS GARBAGE, GOA’S ‘DIRTY PICTURE’?

Filmmaker Qaushik Mukherjee aka Q revels in being the ‘controversial filmmaker’. It’s not a tag that you’re trying to avoid, if your first film is called Gandu. But he uses shock value to draw attention to carefully crafted projects on alternative sexuality, hypocrisy, patriarchy.

The 43-year-old has nine films under his belt, and says, “I don’t need the Indian commercial film distribution to distribute my films. I have never needed them, I don’t need them now. If my film gets selected for a world premiere in a prestigious film festival like Cannes or Berlin International Film Festival, it validated that my film has met the standards of an international film.”

His wish got fulfilled as his latest film, Garbage, had its world premiere in the Panorama section at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival last week. Q is the only Indian director to have a film at Berlin this year.

As the backdrop of his film, he has chosen Goa, his home for the last four years. But the difference is, instead of the breezy, colourful Goa we know, his film is set in the darker, seamier, side of the state — a place of sadism and entrapment.

“When you are not just a visitor, Goa is a very different experience. It has many sides to it and one of them is very dark.

Also there has been a major shift in temperament and policies of the government