"All these were allowed, but you couldn’t see a kiss."
Zoya Akhtar opened up about the importance of showcasing physical intimacy.
Zoya appeared on Expresso with her father Javed.
During the session, Zoya discussed the lack of censorship on OTT and whether it limits or liberates her as a filmmaker.
Dismissing the argument that sublimation makes better art than explicitness, Zoya said there needs to be no censorship in the display of physical intimacy.
Zoya said: “It is very important to showcase consensual intimacy on screen.
“I grew up at a time where women were bullied, beaten up, harassed and sexually assaulted on screen. All these were allowed, but you couldn’t see a kiss.
“People should be allowed to see love, tenderness, physical intimacy between two adults.”
However, the absence of censorship can also lead to a no-holds-barred approach to portraying intimacy onscreen.
Zoya stated that it comes down to the filmmaker’s artistic choice.
“Every film has a tone, and every filmmaker tells a story in a particular way.
“As opposed to Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay, where the choices of showcasing violence were ahead of its time, the violence in Tarantino’s films are operatic.
“It is all about what you are trying to evoke in the audience.
“The French are more open with male nudity when compared with the Americans. Their relationship with their bodies is different.
“It is a very cultural thing, and it depends on how comfortable you are with yourself, how you view sex, how you view your body, etc.
“I wouldn’t do in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara what I did in Lust Stories.
“The audience doesn’t make a big deal of it because the intentions were clear.”
Her comments were echoed by her father Javed:
“If you are showing a love scene to titillate, that is different.
“If you want to evoke some genuine romance and empathetic emotions, then it is different.”
Comparing the vocabulary of his daily life to the ones he sees on screen, he added:
“Even in my worst anger, I don’t use four-letter cuss words.
“But when I saw it being uttered on screen in Bandit Queen, I didn’t mind them because the intention wasn’t to shock or titillate you.
“Many films say they are depicting the lived realities of sections of the society and use these words.
“However, it is clear that except the language, nothing reflects their lived reality. Now, that is crude. Intention is very important.”
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