Farah Khan was born into a film family. Her father lost everything, making movies that did not do well. They were poor and isolated overnight and the family fell apart. But Farah held on to her dark sense of humour, her affection for irony and survived. Starting off as a choreographer in small budget films, she went on to turn film choreography on its head.
After that very successful stint, she took up direction at a time when women directors were still a rarity in the Hindi film industry. But she refused to let her gender define her. Her films were not niche treatises on women’s issues but hugely mounted commercial blockbusters. That is not to say that she would toe the formulaic line— that is just not Farah. Instead she took the formula and contemporized it, like she did her choreography. Presented it with a twist of tongue-in-cheek humour, as she does her life in this interview.

The TBIP Tête-à-Tête is a series of in-depth and intimate interviews with film personalities who are critical to this era of filmmaking. It is an attempt to understand their body of work and their minds. Most of these interviews, conducted by Pragya Tiwari, were recorded between 2012 and 2014 but remain some of the most exhaustive and insightful conversations that exist online.

They featured inThe Big Indian Picture which was an online publication that featured opinion, reportage, narratives, photo-essays, art, interviews and videos. The idea was to broaden the conversation on cinema and examine its influence on art, design, politics and culture at large. And have some fun while at it.

You can access the rest of the archives on www.thebigindianpicture.com

The TBIP Team -

Editor-in-Chief – Pragya Tiwari

Publisher – Milind Soman

Creative Director – Kavi Bhansali

Senior Editor – Rishi Majumder

Created, conceptualised and managed by Oijo Media