Anubhav Sinha: The task is to mix with people in the streets - those I make my films for

Why aren’t people going to the movies like they used to? What happened to that collective hush before the lights dimmed the popcorn, the chatter, the thrill of being one among many? When did the silver screen lose its spell? These questions have been echoing in Anubhav Sinha’s mind for a while.After three decades of writing, directing, and living cinema, he’s decided to step out into the world of those people who fill those theatres. His new journey, ‘Chal Picture Chalein’, is an attempt to listen – really listen – to what India’s audiences have to say, he says.He shares, “In the middle of reading a book that you are loving, what do you do when you go through a paragraph that you don’t get at all? You pause, and you think about what you read.

Maybe you read it again. And again. You spend time with those words and hear what they mean in that context. The present journey to various cities is like reading those paragraphs again, and again.”To decode that paragraph, Anubhav Sinha is hitting the road, heading to Tier I, Tier II, and Tier III cities. The journey began in Lucknow and Jaipur, where he spoke to students, wandered through cinema halls, and even directed a reel.

Now, he is headed to Chandigarh.“Speaking strictly of myself, for the past 30 years, I have been a very busy man. That whole struggle to be good and to be successful – I have lived that too. In that super-focused pursuit, I did not realise that I locked myself in a glass capsule of my awareness of my environment. I subliminally thought I knew what I was seeing. But things change, even if they appear the same or similar. I changed.

The world changed. Society changed.

And then I had some breathing time, and it felt that probably what I was seeing and believing had some discrepancies,” Anubhav reflects on what made him think about this journey.“The task is to go to these cities and mix around with people in the streets. Those I make my films for. Those who spend time and money to go and watch films. I want to visit local cinema halls. Watch the audience watch films. Eat some local street food, which is of course a bonus.” Like food, he says, cinema too demands the five senses. You have to taste it, breathe it, feel it next to strangers who laugh and cry at the same time.After Chandigarh, he plans to head to Dehradun, and after that, Haridwar, Roorkee, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut, Delhi, Aligarh, Agra, Etawah, Kanpur, Allahabad, and Faizabad.