Of course, I'm merely surmising you haven't heard of them.
In the past two decades, the trend of making socially responsible, prudent films has mysteriously evaporated with the decline of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) that was once a powerhouse of independent cinema. Its contribution to India's waning indie scene was epoch-making, producing over 300 films in various Indian languages, thereby setting up the bar that we now struggle to reach.
After its miraculous phase in the '80s, Indian independent cinema resurfaced only in the early '00s, when new filmmakers began exploring those tricky waters with their low-budget projects that didn't catch the fancy of too many commercially, but fortunately left a mark faint enough for me to descry. For the past few years, I've been trying to locate some of these lovely little films, but imagine my bile when I was told that these films were either unheard of or not important enough to be remembered.
However, I did manage to ferret out some of them.
The films I will be mentioning below are films I would like to watch again, films I will watch again, and films that deserve just as much plaudits and puffery as the tripe we now honor with our most prestigious accolades.
Right, that's that. Now to the list :
1. Gattu (2011)
The crummiest piece of news that year was that the awards simply - barefacedly - refused to acknowledge Stanley Ka Dabba as a reputable film. Right, seconded in a jiffy. That's purely disgusting.
But, tragically if I may add, nobody even acknowledged Gattu as a dratted film.
What irks me is how quietly a film as beautiful as this one is released without any substantial credentials backing it, and how quietly, almost intentionally, it is pulled down without even giving it a chance to prove itself. And if it were up to me, I'd make sure this one reaches the eyes and hearts of everyone, because it is ever so charming, so evocative, that it made me want to soar in the sky like the kites it glorifies. Over the years, the Hindi film industry has feigned and flaunted its grand schemes to promote what they call 'meaningful' cinema, a term that has become a bit of a practical joke now. If an industry truly wishes to promote 'meaningful' cinema, whatever that means, give it space and sweat and invest in it. Trumped-up promises won't do.
I confess, I hadn't heard of Rajan Khosa before but, boy, can he handle a camera! Deft, jaunty and bracing, the film runs for a paltry eighty-two minutes but never trudges. And how unembellished is this story about an orphaned kid's earnest wish to take out an intimidating black kite flying in the arid sky, whose owner we never get to see. A kite as a baddie; that's a definite first for me. And Mohammed Samad, the tyke who plays the vanquisher, is absolutely beguiling in the role. When he was on-screen, my eyes never left it.
Khosa has made a film that is impossible to dislike, that raises important issues that have been examined in ample kiddie flicks before, but never sermonizes. It's not only difficult but also rare to come across one. Remarkable.
2. Godmother (1999)
When was the last time a five National Award-winning film lay beyond recall? Right, five.
Shame. Vinay Shukla's skillfully made and astonishingly vivid film is now only a distant memory for me, mutilated by time. It is hard to believe that it used to play so often on television when I was a kid - and that's when I first saw it, that's also the last I saw of it, on television - but so fiery was its imagery that I remember bits and pieces. And I could tell you bits and pieces.
Based on the true-life story of Santokben Jadeja, this bleak and often harrowing biographical-drama pulls no punches on the typical viewer. There's no sugarcoating involved - phew! - for Godmother is a story of barbarity, of lust for power and supremacy, of consequences, and there's no space for pointless schmaltz. And lying in the heart of this urban myth is Shabana Azmi, who gives one of the finest performances of her illustrious career, and that's a mighty achievement, isn't it? What a career she has had!
I don't know how long it will take me to sniff out this small masterpiece, but if you beat me to it, I'd advise you to give it a go. It's not an easy watch, but it's crucial that you do watch it.
3. Harud (2010)
We all know who Aamir Bashir is.
Yes, we do. You've seen him in many films, small roles but made no substantial impact with any of them. Most of you would remember him as the third squeaky clean police officer in A Wednesday. And are we lucky that he got behind the camera to orchestrate what may well be the best film made on the Kashmir insurgency yet.
Born and brought up in the Valley, Bashir knows the place like the back of his hand, he knows the mawkish flapdoodle masquerading as 'Kashmir films' we have been fed for decades and what the audience has come to expect from them. This guy knows. He's an insider with a voice too coarse to the sensitive ear, pooh-poohing the quixotic place the Hindi film industry has turned Kashmir into. He's out to present the Kashmir he knows. Sit back, let the man do his job. He's done a terrific one, if I may say so.
Breathtakingly shot by cinematographer Shankar Raman, Harud is a quiet examination of life in Srinagar, its bizarre ordinariness and simmering anger, gloominess and pessimism, and this makes it an unorthodox analysis of the conflict, so different from the ones we have seen. And somewhere, I knew that Harud is a film that is perhaps closer to the truth, if not perfect, it is a film that stays strikingly subdued. Maybe life in the Valley is somber.
Most of the audiences may not agree with Bashir's approach. But no one will deny that he has made a film far more tangible from the others that had tackled a similar subject.
9. Rockford (1999)
Oh, I've missed watching this film.
Back when I was a kid, my parents used to humor me - and I'm reasonably confident that I wasn't the only one getting a load of this poppycock - by threatening to send me to a boarding school, where I would be caned and buffed into a decorous, scholarly kid. Needless to say, Nagesh Kukunoor's Rockford put them up to it.
Exploring the many exploits of a sheepish adolescent, Rajesh Naidu, in his first year at Rockford Boys High School, Kukunoor's film is far from the remarkable ones he came to be associated with in the early '00s, but there is an air of aplomb, an aura of willfulness, that makes it so charming. It is a story of friendship, of first love, of shattering hostility and subsequent redemption, narrated with honesty and humor, sensitivity and simplicity that is quite unlike any other Hindi film of the genre I have seen. Well, maybe with the exception of Stanley Ka Dabba.
There are films that delight us by being boldly familiar, and those are the tough nuts. Taare Zameen Par is a prime example. Because they take a familiar chapter out of our lives and show us what we already know, what we have already seen. They seek to please us by trying to understand us, and if we spot a bit of ourselves in them, they win. These are films that choose a path less explored.
Rockford is one such film. It's your story.
It's a small film but a sparkling one. Like most of Kukunoor's earlier works.
In the past two decades, the trend of making socially responsible, prudent films has mysteriously evaporated with the decline of the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) that was once a powerhouse of independent cinema. Its contribution to India's waning indie scene was epoch-making, producing over 300 films in various Indian languages, thereby setting up the bar that we now struggle to reach.
After its miraculous phase in the '80s, Indian independent cinema resurfaced only in the early '00s, when new filmmakers began exploring those tricky waters with their low-budget projects that didn't catch the fancy of too many commercially, but fortunately left a mark faint enough for me to descry. For the past few years, I've been trying to locate some of these lovely little films, but imagine my bile when I was told that these films were either unheard of or not important enough to be remembered.
However, I did manage to ferret out some of them.
The films I will be mentioning below are films I would like to watch again, films I will watch again, and films that deserve just as much plaudits and puffery as the tripe we now honor with our most prestigious accolades.
Right, that's that. Now to the list :
1. Gattu (2011)
The crummiest piece of news that year was that the awards simply - barefacedly - refused to acknowledge Stanley Ka Dabba as a reputable film. Right, seconded in a jiffy. That's purely disgusting.
But, tragically if I may add, nobody even acknowledged Gattu as a dratted film.
What irks me is how quietly a film as beautiful as this one is released without any substantial credentials backing it, and how quietly, almost intentionally, it is pulled down without even giving it a chance to prove itself. And if it were up to me, I'd make sure this one reaches the eyes and hearts of everyone, because it is ever so charming, so evocative, that it made me want to soar in the sky like the kites it glorifies. Over the years, the Hindi film industry has feigned and flaunted its grand schemes to promote what they call 'meaningful' cinema, a term that has become a bit of a practical joke now. If an industry truly wishes to promote 'meaningful' cinema, whatever that means, give it space and sweat and invest in it. Trumped-up promises won't do.
I confess, I hadn't heard of Rajan Khosa before but, boy, can he handle a camera! Deft, jaunty and bracing, the film runs for a paltry eighty-two minutes but never trudges. And how unembellished is this story about an orphaned kid's earnest wish to take out an intimidating black kite flying in the arid sky, whose owner we never get to see. A kite as a baddie; that's a definite first for me. And Mohammed Samad, the tyke who plays the vanquisher, is absolutely beguiling in the role. When he was on-screen, my eyes never left it.
Khosa has made a film that is impossible to dislike, that raises important issues that have been examined in ample kiddie flicks before, but never sermonizes. It's not only difficult but also rare to come across one. Remarkable.
2. Godmother (1999)
When was the last time a five National Award-winning film lay beyond recall? Right, five.
Shame. Vinay Shukla's skillfully made and astonishingly vivid film is now only a distant memory for me, mutilated by time. It is hard to believe that it used to play so often on television when I was a kid - and that's when I first saw it, that's also the last I saw of it, on television - but so fiery was its imagery that I remember bits and pieces. And I could tell you bits and pieces.
Based on the true-life story of Santokben Jadeja, this bleak and often harrowing biographical-drama pulls no punches on the typical viewer. There's no sugarcoating involved - phew! - for Godmother is a story of barbarity, of lust for power and supremacy, of consequences, and there's no space for pointless schmaltz. And lying in the heart of this urban myth is Shabana Azmi, who gives one of the finest performances of her illustrious career, and that's a mighty achievement, isn't it? What a career she has had!
I don't know how long it will take me to sniff out this small masterpiece, but if you beat me to it, I'd advise you to give it a go. It's not an easy watch, but it's crucial that you do watch it.
3. Harud (2010)
We all know who Aamir Bashir is.
Yes, we do. You've seen him in many films, small roles but made no substantial impact with any of them. Most of you would remember him as the third squeaky clean police officer in A Wednesday. And are we lucky that he got behind the camera to orchestrate what may well be the best film made on the Kashmir insurgency yet.
Born and brought up in the Valley, Bashir knows the place like the back of his hand, he knows the mawkish flapdoodle masquerading as 'Kashmir films' we have been fed for decades and what the audience has come to expect from them. This guy knows. He's an insider with a voice too coarse to the sensitive ear, pooh-poohing the quixotic place the Hindi film industry has turned Kashmir into. He's out to present the Kashmir he knows. Sit back, let the man do his job. He's done a terrific one, if I may say so.
Breathtakingly shot by cinematographer Shankar Raman, Harud is a quiet examination of life in Srinagar, its bizarre ordinariness and simmering anger, gloominess and pessimism, and this makes it an unorthodox analysis of the conflict, so different from the ones we have seen. And somewhere, I knew that Harud is a film that is perhaps closer to the truth, if not perfect, it is a film that stays strikingly subdued. Maybe life in the Valley is somber.
Most of the audiences may not agree with Bashir's approach. But no one will deny that he has made a film far more tangible from the others that had tackled a similar subject.
4. In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989)
We all know Arundhati Roy, the Man Booker winner, the idealistic orator, the sagacious, scathing critic. But how many of us claim to know Arundhati Roy, the actress and screenwriter?
Quite right. Primarily in the English language, Pradip Kishen's bittersweet cult film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the nefariously forgotten, made-for-Doordarshan film that marked her screenwriting and acting debut, is an absolutely spiffing watch. Revolving around a bunch of vexed, scruffy, pot-smoking and teacher-hating architecture students - who endow their nastiest professor with the sobriquet 'Yamdoot' and play table-tennis in their underwear - and their adventures in their final year of college, Roy weaved her experiences, remembrances and observations from her days at the School of Planning and Architecture into a profoundly funny, candid and ultimately heartfelt film that has come closest to capturing the warp and woof of student life in India. And before you yak about 3 Idiots, let me assert quite overtly that 3 Idiots missed the mark by yards. Yards.
This obdurate film was understandably a darling of the architecture students across the country back in its time, fervently brought to my attention by my father, an architect himself, who took an instant liking to the spoonfuls of wackiness Roy laced her witty script with. It took me four whole years to get my hands on a print - and I ended up with a darned lousy one - but it seeped in as the film ended just how rewarding the effort had been. It is one of the most acutely observed, percipiently written and sympathetic Hindi films on teenage angst I have seen.
Oh, and for fanboys and fangirls swooning over Shah Rukh Khan, his minuscule cameo will make you chortle. In any case, smoke this one out. To wait for it to play on national television, where it was screened only once in 1989 and then never again, would mean being injudiciously optimistic.
5. Khamosh (1985)
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the gifted helmer who gave us Parinda, who received a forgotten Oscar nomination for his documentary short, An Encounter With Faces, in 1979, traced his Hitchcockian roots with Khamosh. Yes, Hitchcockian.
If Parinda wasn't sample enough of this lad's obvious flair, take a look at this terrifically taut whodunit. Khamosh combines the themes of blackmail, jealousy, lust and, of course, murder into a twisty film that lasts a brisk hundred minutes of pure storytelling. You see, eerie mysteries with a psychological profile have always been Chopra's forte. His impressive debut, Sazaye Maut, is a film nobody knows about, yet everyone who saw it remembers, and remembers it well. Khamosh is, in the simplest of words, a showpiece, a specimen of what a great director can do with a camera in his hands. Mission Kashmir quashed the illusion, but I digress.
Khamosh is splendidly engrossing while it lasts, enjoyable to a certain extent too, but those of you who can spot and appreciate aptitude are in for a wild ride. Sign up for this one.
6. Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984)
Saeed Akhtar Mirza, sadly, is remembered more for his titles than his solitaires.
He brought us the Indian common man's hassles with a thin undercurrent of humor, a modicum of tragedy and a lot of feeling in his films. He looked at the same things as we did, but his curiosity never wavered in the things we don't usually bat an eye toward. I mean, look at Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! as a sample. Would you care to lend an ear to a rancorous old couple griping over a collapsing building if you come across them everyday? No? Mirza did, and we got a gem of a movie to relish.
Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!, like numerous films before it taking scathing, humorous potshots at the lamentable condition of the Indian judiciary, offers an insightful glance at the naked truth. An aging duo drag their crafty landlord to the court after he refuses to address their problems over a collapsing structure of their building. The case isn't done and dusted promptly, of course, and the duo find themselves trapped, fighting a losing battle that is beyond their comprehension with the courts, with the world and with people who are more eminent than them.
Like most Mirza's works, it's a strikingly simple film, but one that is also deceivingly so. Scrutinize, and it's an intricate piece of work because it paints the spheres we know about but rarely are a part of. It cleverly balances wit and despair, and ultimately uncloaks a frighteningly familiar portrait of the world we live in. No way you will get your head around it.
I don't know if this film is everyone's cup of tea. But it's a resolute attempt, nevertheless, that needs to be watched.
7. Party (1984)
Hindi cinema ought to start bragging about nurturing a filmmaker as adept as Govind Nihalani.
He gave me the best Hindi film I have ever seen (Ardh Satya, for the uninitiated) and the best thing that has happened to Indian television (please watch this spellbinding albeit little-known miniseries, Tamas, if you haven't already or doubt my carefully chosen words.) Apart from this, he's given us scads of dandy films that have made us proud on several occasions. What a catalog, this - Aakrosh, Drohkaal and Takshak. I'm afraid I didn't care much for Drishti. Dullsville, I thought.
Tall claims? Not exactly. Party convinced me that Nihalani wasn't just any other filmmaker. While the rest of the world were making, and laudably succeeding, in creating compelling dramas with a handful of people trapped in a single location, the practice had not caught on in India back then. Though Basu Chatterjee's nicely adapted Ek Ruka Hua Faisla tried to change things, it just couldn't come out of the thick shadow of 12 Angry Men.
Party revolves around a bunch of people getting ready for and eventually hobnobbing with each other in a party. It is a film intelligently pieced together, strikingly offbeat in its content and a woeful reminder of the talent we have yet never completely acknowledge.
It's unconventional for a Hindi film to go down this road, and perhaps that is what makes it such a splendid attempt.
We all know Arundhati Roy, the Man Booker winner, the idealistic orator, the sagacious, scathing critic. But how many of us claim to know Arundhati Roy, the actress and screenwriter?
Quite right. Primarily in the English language, Pradip Kishen's bittersweet cult film In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones, the nefariously forgotten, made-for-Doordarshan film that marked her screenwriting and acting debut, is an absolutely spiffing watch. Revolving around a bunch of vexed, scruffy, pot-smoking and teacher-hating architecture students - who endow their nastiest professor with the sobriquet 'Yamdoot' and play table-tennis in their underwear - and their adventures in their final year of college, Roy weaved her experiences, remembrances and observations from her days at the School of Planning and Architecture into a profoundly funny, candid and ultimately heartfelt film that has come closest to capturing the warp and woof of student life in India. And before you yak about 3 Idiots, let me assert quite overtly that 3 Idiots missed the mark by yards. Yards.
This obdurate film was understandably a darling of the architecture students across the country back in its time, fervently brought to my attention by my father, an architect himself, who took an instant liking to the spoonfuls of wackiness Roy laced her witty script with. It took me four whole years to get my hands on a print - and I ended up with a darned lousy one - but it seeped in as the film ended just how rewarding the effort had been. It is one of the most acutely observed, percipiently written and sympathetic Hindi films on teenage angst I have seen.
Oh, and for fanboys and fangirls swooning over Shah Rukh Khan, his minuscule cameo will make you chortle. In any case, smoke this one out. To wait for it to play on national television, where it was screened only once in 1989 and then never again, would mean being injudiciously optimistic.
5. Khamosh (1985)
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the gifted helmer who gave us Parinda, who received a forgotten Oscar nomination for his documentary short, An Encounter With Faces, in 1979, traced his Hitchcockian roots with Khamosh. Yes, Hitchcockian.
If Parinda wasn't sample enough of this lad's obvious flair, take a look at this terrifically taut whodunit. Khamosh combines the themes of blackmail, jealousy, lust and, of course, murder into a twisty film that lasts a brisk hundred minutes of pure storytelling. You see, eerie mysteries with a psychological profile have always been Chopra's forte. His impressive debut, Sazaye Maut, is a film nobody knows about, yet everyone who saw it remembers, and remembers it well. Khamosh is, in the simplest of words, a showpiece, a specimen of what a great director can do with a camera in his hands. Mission Kashmir quashed the illusion, but I digress.
Khamosh is splendidly engrossing while it lasts, enjoyable to a certain extent too, but those of you who can spot and appreciate aptitude are in for a wild ride. Sign up for this one.
6. Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! (1984)
Saeed Akhtar Mirza, sadly, is remembered more for his titles than his solitaires.
He brought us the Indian common man's hassles with a thin undercurrent of humor, a modicum of tragedy and a lot of feeling in his films. He looked at the same things as we did, but his curiosity never wavered in the things we don't usually bat an eye toward. I mean, look at Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho! as a sample. Would you care to lend an ear to a rancorous old couple griping over a collapsing building if you come across them everyday? No? Mirza did, and we got a gem of a movie to relish.
Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho!, like numerous films before it taking scathing, humorous potshots at the lamentable condition of the Indian judiciary, offers an insightful glance at the naked truth. An aging duo drag their crafty landlord to the court after he refuses to address their problems over a collapsing structure of their building. The case isn't done and dusted promptly, of course, and the duo find themselves trapped, fighting a losing battle that is beyond their comprehension with the courts, with the world and with people who are more eminent than them.
Like most Mirza's works, it's a strikingly simple film, but one that is also deceivingly so. Scrutinize, and it's an intricate piece of work because it paints the spheres we know about but rarely are a part of. It cleverly balances wit and despair, and ultimately uncloaks a frighteningly familiar portrait of the world we live in. No way you will get your head around it.
I don't know if this film is everyone's cup of tea. But it's a resolute attempt, nevertheless, that needs to be watched.
7. Party (1984)
Hindi cinema ought to start bragging about nurturing a filmmaker as adept as Govind Nihalani.
He gave me the best Hindi film I have ever seen (Ardh Satya, for the uninitiated) and the best thing that has happened to Indian television (please watch this spellbinding albeit little-known miniseries, Tamas, if you haven't already or doubt my carefully chosen words.) Apart from this, he's given us scads of dandy films that have made us proud on several occasions. What a catalog, this - Aakrosh, Drohkaal and Takshak. I'm afraid I didn't care much for Drishti. Dullsville, I thought.
Tall claims? Not exactly. Party convinced me that Nihalani wasn't just any other filmmaker. While the rest of the world were making, and laudably succeeding, in creating compelling dramas with a handful of people trapped in a single location, the practice had not caught on in India back then. Though Basu Chatterjee's nicely adapted Ek Ruka Hua Faisla tried to change things, it just couldn't come out of the thick shadow of 12 Angry Men.
Party revolves around a bunch of people getting ready for and eventually hobnobbing with each other in a party. It is a film intelligently pieced together, strikingly offbeat in its content and a woeful reminder of the talent we have yet never completely acknowledge.
It's unconventional for a Hindi film to go down this road, and perhaps that is what makes it such a splendid attempt.
8. Raghu Romeo (2003)
It's a marvel this film was even made.
I say this because I have read - from a rather unreliable source, I must assert - that it had thirty-five producers on board. Thirty-five. Now, I don't know if that's true, but Raghu Romeo, thirty-five nincompoops on board or nil, is a wonderfully understated film. It's daringly different, inexplicably sad and has that charming human element that Rajat Kapoor's films are defined by used to its fullest. With scant characters and only a handful of locations, Kapoor weaves a solicitous tale about a young waiter's love affair with a television show.
The waiter in question is played with subtleness and compassion by Vijay Raaz, whose scraggy shoulders are tolerant enough to carry the film all the way. He's effortlessly pitiful, desolate and delightful, adding layers to his character till you can relate to it. He's upfront but unpredictable, timid yet incisive. What the film manages to do is make him human, make him one of us, all the while being an observant, earnest take on the country's obsession with melodramas.
Like most of Kapoor's films, Raghu Romeo manages to leave you with the feeling that you have watched something, because even if you leave with a simper, it has managed to evoke a torrent of feeling inside, warm fuzzy being the first.
It's a marvel this film was even made.
I say this because I have read - from a rather unreliable source, I must assert - that it had thirty-five producers on board. Thirty-five. Now, I don't know if that's true, but Raghu Romeo, thirty-five nincompoops on board or nil, is a wonderfully understated film. It's daringly different, inexplicably sad and has that charming human element that Rajat Kapoor's films are defined by used to its fullest. With scant characters and only a handful of locations, Kapoor weaves a solicitous tale about a young waiter's love affair with a television show.
The waiter in question is played with subtleness and compassion by Vijay Raaz, whose scraggy shoulders are tolerant enough to carry the film all the way. He's effortlessly pitiful, desolate and delightful, adding layers to his character till you can relate to it. He's upfront but unpredictable, timid yet incisive. What the film manages to do is make him human, make him one of us, all the while being an observant, earnest take on the country's obsession with melodramas.
Like most of Kapoor's films, Raghu Romeo manages to leave you with the feeling that you have watched something, because even if you leave with a simper, it has managed to evoke a torrent of feeling inside, warm fuzzy being the first.
9. Rockford (1999)
Oh, I've missed watching this film.
Back when I was a kid, my parents used to humor me - and I'm reasonably confident that I wasn't the only one getting a load of this poppycock - by threatening to send me to a boarding school, where I would be caned and buffed into a decorous, scholarly kid. Needless to say, Nagesh Kukunoor's Rockford put them up to it.
Exploring the many exploits of a sheepish adolescent, Rajesh Naidu, in his first year at Rockford Boys High School, Kukunoor's film is far from the remarkable ones he came to be associated with in the early '00s, but there is an air of aplomb, an aura of willfulness, that makes it so charming. It is a story of friendship, of first love, of shattering hostility and subsequent redemption, narrated with honesty and humor, sensitivity and simplicity that is quite unlike any other Hindi film of the genre I have seen. Well, maybe with the exception of Stanley Ka Dabba.
There are films that delight us by being boldly familiar, and those are the tough nuts. Taare Zameen Par is a prime example. Because they take a familiar chapter out of our lives and show us what we already know, what we have already seen. They seek to please us by trying to understand us, and if we spot a bit of ourselves in them, they win. These are films that choose a path less explored.
Rockford is one such film. It's your story.
It's a small film but a sparkling one. Like most of Kukunoor's earlier works.
10. Supermen Of Malegaon (2008)
Malegaon, a town in the heart of the country plagued by communal disharmony, houses many of India's most passionate filmmakers.
The problem is, we don't know any of them.
Faiza Ahmed Khan's side-splitting yet tearjerking documentary does a commendable job of bringing them to us. Finished in 2008 but released theatrically in India in 2012, when I finally got to see it, it was one of the most wondrous experiences I had had at the movies that year. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state for the record that this was my favorite Indian film of that year.
Sheikh Nasir, who runs a video library and garment store in the small town, really is a figure of inspiration and awe. He has already ripped off the Hindi film industry's most cherished film, Sholay, and had the infamous train sequence set on a local bus with armed dacoits chasing it on cheap bicycles. He proudly states that the audience had applauded his low-budget, visionary spectacle, and now he is prepared to make his most ambitious film yet - a rip-off of Hollywood's beloved Superman.
Khan wisely captures his pitfalls and triumphs without ever making it look caricatural.
In a particularly amusing scene, Nasir naively inquires why a normal film crew has a costume designer. The man has a point; he accompanies his actor - the Superman, Shafiq, an ordinary factory worker who agrees to work on the film part-time - to shop in the local market for costumes and accessories. Even his screenwriter doubles up as a VFX artist and primary antagonist. The Superman's cape is actually a dupatta tucked neatly in the collar. And they only have a paltry 30K to make the movie with.
And yet, what they have in liberal amounts, and what many Indian filmmakers sadly lack, is verve. The story of this small film is fused with useful anecdotes from every person involved, their dreams, desires and despairs. It constantly oscillates between hilarious and heartbreaking, but always remains optimistic in its scrutiny.
I don't remember the last time a film has made me feel this elated about being so ordinary.
Malegaon, a town in the heart of the country plagued by communal disharmony, houses many of India's most passionate filmmakers.
The problem is, we don't know any of them.
Faiza Ahmed Khan's side-splitting yet tearjerking documentary does a commendable job of bringing them to us. Finished in 2008 but released theatrically in India in 2012, when I finally got to see it, it was one of the most wondrous experiences I had had at the movies that year. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state for the record that this was my favorite Indian film of that year.
Sheikh Nasir, who runs a video library and garment store in the small town, really is a figure of inspiration and awe. He has already ripped off the Hindi film industry's most cherished film, Sholay, and had the infamous train sequence set on a local bus with armed dacoits chasing it on cheap bicycles. He proudly states that the audience had applauded his low-budget, visionary spectacle, and now he is prepared to make his most ambitious film yet - a rip-off of Hollywood's beloved Superman.
Khan wisely captures his pitfalls and triumphs without ever making it look caricatural.
In a particularly amusing scene, Nasir naively inquires why a normal film crew has a costume designer. The man has a point; he accompanies his actor - the Superman, Shafiq, an ordinary factory worker who agrees to work on the film part-time - to shop in the local market for costumes and accessories. Even his screenwriter doubles up as a VFX artist and primary antagonist. The Superman's cape is actually a dupatta tucked neatly in the collar. And they only have a paltry 30K to make the movie with.
And yet, what they have in liberal amounts, and what many Indian filmmakers sadly lack, is verve. The story of this small film is fused with useful anecdotes from every person involved, their dreams, desires and despairs. It constantly oscillates between hilarious and heartbreaking, but always remains optimistic in its scrutiny.
I don't remember the last time a film has made me feel this elated about being so ordinary.
