The auteur theory framed the director as the central shaping force of a film. But soon, there was a backlash with the ‘death of the auteur’ counter-theory, and cinema collectives formed where it was the collective political voice, and not the singular personal voice that dominated. When you make a film as a community, whose varying voices, personalities, preoccupations, and stylistic proclivities seep into the film’s form, the stakes explode. Working with many voices, is it the job of a director to find a chorus among the chaos, shaping the film like a music conductor, or does one revel in discordance? In what voice does the film sing? Can discordance be a virtue in cinema, obsessed as we are with coherence?
