From KCRW in Santa Monica, this is The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

An accountant from India turned Bollywood filmmaker was a real affinity for the shadows beneath the myth of women.

So why don't you make a film about Shaker Kapoor? Instead, I'm talking to him

with hopefully he'll discuss his new film Elizabeth the Golden Age in addition to one of my

favorites, the bandit queen and of course Elizabeth Shaker. First of all, thanks so much for being here.

It's an absolute pleasure, absolute.

I've got to ask you about that because between the Elizabeth films and the Bandit Queen,

you have a real, I think, affinity for dealing with women and transitional periods in your films.

Well, there are two separate issues dealing with women and transitional period.

I like to deal with women, basically because the genre of filmmaking, when it comes to dealing with men, and men that

face obstacles within the genre of filmmaking are turned very, very masculine. It all becomes

about conquest, fighting, fists, you know. Whereas when you deal with women that face obstacles, it becomes naturally about the spirit that fights back.

And that's what interests me more.

It is about where does the body end, where does everything end, and where does the spirit start.

When you're jogging at one point, I used to do this and test it out, is I run, run, run until the body gives up.

And then suddenly the spirit takes over.

So that fascinates me is, where do we live?

Do we live in the body?

Where do we live in the spirit?

When you make films about men, it's always about the body and about conquest and the mailness of it, unless you make Buddha or Gandhi or Mandela.

But with women, it becomes much more interesting and much more complex because the spirit

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