Video excerpts, war stories about the making of, concerns about distribution, ringing cell phones and crying babies is how the DVD launch of festival fav Vanaja went down at Borders (NYC) on Friday. As Rajnesh Domalpalli (director) smiled his way through the proceedings, someone in the audience remarked “it looks like you are watching the movie for the first time”.

The film is in its second year on the festival circuit (112 festivals at last count), but distributors in India have predictably shied away. The infamous censor board’s demand for nine cuts, and the director’s reluctance to comply have further complicated the distribution prospects.

Rajnesh shared some interesting tidbits with a diverse audience at the dvd release:

• The film was a thesis project for Rajnesh’s film school degree at Columbia. He chose a subject close to his heart, based in his native state of Andhra Pradesh.
• All the actors are actually non-actors, picked up from the lower social strata. The subject matter of the film required the actors to bring forth their life experiences. Rajnesh conducted an acting school in his basement.
• Mamatha Bhukya who plays the title role of Vanaja learnt Kuchipudi dance for a year after being cast in the film. You could not have guessed it.
• The filmmakers could not advertise for actors in the local papers in Andhra Pradesh due to bureaucratic reasons, so they advertised instead for “household help”. When unsuspecting applicants showed up for the interview, the director would slowly turn the subject: don’t you think you deserve a chance at acting
• The Indian censors were uncomfortable with the sexual undercurrent in some of the most engaging scenes. In one particular instance, the shape of a young man’s genitalia was visible through the underwear, and that was enough to demand a cut.

It was clear from the presentation that Rajnesh was proud not only of the film, but also the lives it had touched (family gardeners turned into production designers). The lack of distribution in his own country, coupled with the belief that audiences there are not even ready for a film of this kind, has done nothing to dampen his spirits. Having heard of Indian filmmakers driven to depression because of the Indian censor + distributor double whammy, I was curious to understand the driving force behind Rajnesh’s sunny disposition.

I may have found the answer in a post by Rajnesh on the Vanaja user forum:

Film, to me, is magic: On Screen. In my Mind. In my Heart.
The simple pride in watching Mamatha perform what she calls “Scene 66″ - where she begs the landlady to return….
or the joy of seeing a viewfinder filled with waterlily leaves…
or the frustration of being awoken in the middle of the night for a cup of “morning” coffee…
or the value of a million small things, each of which appears more precious than any other…
each in turn, sums to the total that is Film.

I can imagine that I have placed on the scales, on one hand, a bucket full of very good reasons why you should not be a filmmaker, and on the other side, just a tiny bead of why you should.

But whether or not that tiny bead is the purpose of your life… that is a decision only you can make.

For this filmmaker, pleasure is in the making.

However, the film stumbles repeatedly and is unsatisfactory on the whole. The script is based on a children’s book by Ruskin Bond:

A ten year old village girl Biniya acquires a fancy blue umbrella from a passing tourist, and soon develops a loving bond with it. However, the desire for the blue umbrella spreads like fire among the villagers, and it’s eventually stolen. Tea stall owner Nandu Khatri is the prime suspect, who acquires his own red umbrella that looks remarkably similar to the missing one. When the truth is revealed, Nandu is publicly denounced by the village elders and shunned by the villagers. In the end Biniya is the one to break the ice and reach out to Khatri.

The film loses sight of its key audience (kids) and turns inexplicably dark in the latter half. The director may have wanted to make an adult film that has kids, and many Iranian films have successfully done that.
However, the approach here is too inconsistent. The one-dimensional characters in the film (apart from Khatri) are the other major problem. The story develops primarily from the POV of Khatri, and we are deprived of the personal journey Biniya has to make from being a regular kid with an umbrella fetish, to the bold girl who breaks the barriers and embraces an ostracized thief. Vishal Bharadwaj disappoints.

]]> http://www.baiscope.com/2008/05/20/blue-umbrella/feed/ http://www.baiscope.com/2008/05/16/ramchand-pakistani/ http://www.baiscope.com/2008/05/16/ramchand-pakistani/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 19:26:10 +0000 baiscope wallah http://www.baiscope.com/?p=48 Nandita Das is the most beautiful actor in Indian cinema. Well, may be she’s got some competition now. She gives yet another heart warming performance in this Pakistani film based on true events, highlighting the plight of innocent people caught on the wrong side of the contentious border between India and Pakistan.

An ironical twist is that the family caught in this web is a Hindu dalit family living on the Pakistani side of the fence:

The singular theme of the film is how a child from Pakistan aged eight years learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother (Nandita Das) while being held prisoner, along with his father in the jail of a country i.e. India, which is hostile to his own, while on the other side of the border, the wife-mother, devastated by their sudden disappearance builds a new chapter of her life, by her solitary struggle for sheer survival.

The performance of Syed Fazal Hussain as the young Ramchand is one of the joys of the film. Director Mehreen Jabbar’s debut film has a handmade quality to it, little rough at the edges, which works to its advantage. The manufactured sterility of Hollywood or heightened melodrama of Bollywood would have failed the honesty of the subject.

Mehreen Jabbar wanted this to be a cross-border collaboration, and was easily able to rope in Nandita Das to play the lead role (evidentally, she is the first Indian actor to obtain permission to shoot in Pakistan!). The other Indian contributers include music director Debajyoti Mishra and singer Shobha Mudgal. Mehreen was surprised by the co-operation of the police at the Indian jail in Bhuj, where she conducted her research, and also support of the Indian minister Mani Shankar Aiyer.

The film was lauded by the South Asian community in New York at the Tribeca Film Festival 2008.

The film, directed by first time Spanish director-duo Piedrahita and Sopeña, was showcased in the Discovery section at the Tribeca Film Festival 2008.

The walls are closing in-literally-on four brainiac mathematicians with shadowy pasts in this übertense debut… Each has been invited by the mysterious Fermat to a sort of salon for riddle freaks, where they will try to solve an assuredly grand enigma… Solve it in one minute or the walls, rigged with mega hydraulic presses will begin to press in. With their lives on the line, these four brains must solve their most profound equation yet: Why is someone trying to kill them?

This is an intense movie that never lets up on the pace, with mini-climaxes and revelations at every turn, that you almost come to expect after a while. At the post-movie interview, the directors (who also wrote the movie) revealed that the movie was their tribute to the mega-hits Lost and 24. The seed of the idea: let’s put 4 people in a room, and have them confront a life threatening situation. The filmmakers chose mathematicians, as they are “scientific poets”.

This approach reflects in the fact that form and structure are the elements that make the movie click, and not some underlying premise. The filmmakers did not really have anything to say, rather a strong desire to implement Hollywood clichés in a very witty and entertaining manner, something their favorite TV series have done so well: they are film “constructionists“. If they weren’t filmmakers, they would be designing roller coasters.