New Delhi: Actor Bhuvan Bam wants to bring a revolution—in the food served on film sets.
“I have been on sets where the food is given according to hierarchy,” Bam told ThePrint, ahead of the trailer launch of his upcoming Amazon Prime series, The Revolutionaries.
Directed by Nikkhil Advani, the period action thriller show revolves around lesser-known freedom fighters such as Rash Behari Bose, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Pratibha Lahiri, and Bagha Jatin, played by Bam, Rohit Saraf, Pratibha Ranta, and Gurfateh Pirzada, respectively.
During the conversation, the cast members mentioned the revolutions they would want to bring in the film industry. In addition to the need for better-quality food on sets, Bam also pointed to the deteriorating working conditions across Indian cinema. With long hours becoming routine, he questioned how people are expected to keep functioning when even necessities are overlooked.
“Nowadays, overtime is so common. People are working overtime for over six hours, but are you giving food that is worth it? You’re not,” Bam said in Hindi.
The conditions, according to the actor, are nothing short of dictatorial.
“I was somewhere on a set, and in the evening, they placed a big tray loaded with jalebis. It’s just ‘sugar rush’ and work. Yeh toh full Kim Jong Un (It’s like working for Kim Jong Un),” he said.
Saraf turned his attention to the lightmen, who he said often bear some of the longest and most physically demanding working hours on a set.
“They are the first ones to come in the morning, because they have to set up. They have to leave their houses at 2:30 am sometimes, and they are the last people to leave,” Saraf said.
It’s not a complex problem.
“What Adil Khan Productions has done is, going forward, he is going to have a separate crew to dismantle lights, which is phenomenal,” Saraf said. “We need more people like that. That is a revolution I want everyone to join in.”
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‘Washrooms for women’
Pirzada’s idea of a revolution lies in a fundamental question: pay. He called for greater uniformity in how money is distributed across a production, arguing that the biggest stars often take an outsized share of the budget, while technicians and other crew members—many of whom work the longest hours—are left with comparatively little.
“They barely make money. Sometimes the actor is getting more than the budget of the movie, which is absurd,” he said.
Ranta would like to revolutionise representation. She called for greater support for good, women-led and women-centric stories, pointing out that many films continue to be told predominantly from a male perspective.
“Most stories we see run from the man’s PoV. To bring a story where the woman is standing in the front, I would want to see a revolution of that sort, which I think is coming. It’s on its way,” she said.
Ranta also pointed to the lack of clean washrooms for women on film sets. It disproportionately affects women, especially junior artists and crew members.
The Revolutionaries is set to stream on 12 September.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)