Remember the independents? The ones who dared to explore risky subjects, cast no-name actors, beg and borrow to complete their projects, and face humiliating rejections from distributors and exhibitors?
The tribe is thriving despite the odds, and its members continue to grapple with the rules of the marketplace. The more pragmatic among them managed to push through their ticket window-unfriendly films in 2014. PK and Happy New Year might have set new (and unverifiable) box-office records, but for the cheerleaders of outlier cinema, the happier phenomenon was the release of such films as Miss Lovely, Aankhon Dekhi, Sulemani Keeda and Dekh Tamasha Dekh.
Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely follows two porn filmmaker-brothers working in the 1980s, the decade before Bombay became Mumbai and Hindi cinema came to be branded as Bollywood. Miss Lovely fittingly came out on the same day –January 17, 2014 – as Kamal Swaroop’s Om-dar-ba-dar, made in 1989 but never released before. Swaroop and Ahluwalia are fellow travellers separated by time. Both are part of a scant but vital experimental scene that is barely seen outside film festivals and private screenings. Swaroop’s singular and deeply personal exploration of spiritual and romantic matters in small-town India represents the kind of rush-of-blood-to-the-head chutzpah that is rarely seen these days.
What passes off for independent cinema, at least by the time it gets readied as a link in the supply chain, is more offbeat than arthouse. The movies that manage to grab the trade’s attention are more honest and realistic than mainstream fare, and explore subjects shunned by formula-addicted filmmakers. They are also more accessible than such idiosyncratic projects as Miss Lovely, and often borrow elements from populist cinema (comedy, music) to widen their reach.
Rajat Kapoor’s Aankhon Dekhi, an accomplished picaresque comedy, emerged from the accessible offbeat corner. Kapoor’s beautifully shot and designed return-to-roots drama is set in Old Delhi, and is the wise and wistful yarn of an aging travel agent’s Quixotic quest for meaning and purpose. As his family unravels like a ball of wool, Bauji, played by Sanjay Mishra, pursues a wholly different thread.
Feroz Abbas Khan’s Dekh Tamasha Dekh is a seriocomic account of communal polarisation in a small town. A poor man is crushed to death by a politician’s oversized hoarding, sparking off claims from members of the Hindu religion he was born into and the Muslim faith he converted to. Despite its occasional staginess, Dekh Tamasha Dekh provides a scarily pertinent commentary on the divisive and delirious times in which we live.
Masurkar’s Sulemani Keeda is similarly bumpy, but is a nevertheless charming and warm slacker comedy about two film writers in search of work and love. Hope takes flight, hearts are broken and truths emerge about the movie business. Perhaps Bollywood satires are better left to the dissidents rather than the self-declared outsiders on the inside?
Sulemani Keeda was completed in 2013 but released only this year through PVR Director’s Rare. The multiplex chain’s programming slot is dedicated to alternative cinema in all languages, but there are caveats and challenges. Director’s Rare passes on the costs of digital projection and publicity to the filmmakers it signs up. Some films shown under this label are relegated to inconvenient time slots.
Indie spirit, celebrity flesh
Two years into its existence, Director’s Rare gives minnows a rare shot at entering the mainstream. But it doesn’t have an identity beyond being a screening platform, and it remains dependent on celebrity endorsement, as was evident in the case of the two documentaries that were released this year. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap backed Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, while director Anand Gandhi helped Nishtha Jain’s Gulabi Gang emerge out of the obscurity that usually envelops Indian documentaries.
Even as the mavericks attempt to enter the market on their own terms, mainstream Hindi cinema continues to reinvent itself by borrowing some tricks from independent filmmaking. Hasee Toh Phasee, Highway and Queen are firmly populist films, but their quirkiness, realistic acting, and believable characters and scenarios display the influence of arthouse storytelling. One of independent cinema’s most vocal mascots, Anurag Kashyap, seems to be showing the way. Kashyap’s Ugly, a gritty kidnapping drama, sneaked into cinemas at the end of 2014, a few months before his mega-budget extravaganza Bombay Velvet, starring box-office darlings Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma, arrives on the big screen.
One of the best independent films of the year has not yet been released. Chaitanya Tamhane’s debut Court, a fascinating multilingual study of the workings of the Indian judicial system, has picked up several awards at films festivals in India and abroad. What will its release plan be like? Will it get the showcasing it deserves, or will it need the encouragement of an influential celebrity or two? The fringe remains yoked to the mainstream in ways that are beneficial for both. But who will speak for the filmmaker who has a fiercely independent voice but no amplifier?
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The tribe is thriving despite the odds, and its members continue to grapple with the rules of the marketplace. The more pragmatic among them managed to push through their ticket window-unfriendly films in 2014. PK and Happy New Year might have set new (and unverifiable) box-office records, but for the cheerleaders of outlier cinema, the happier phenomenon was the release of such films as Miss Lovely, Aankhon Dekhi, Sulemani Keeda and Dekh Tamasha Dekh.
Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely follows two porn filmmaker-brothers working in the 1980s, the decade before Bombay became Mumbai and Hindi cinema came to be branded as Bollywood. Miss Lovely fittingly came out on the same day –January 17, 2014 – as Kamal Swaroop’s Om-dar-ba-dar, made in 1989 but never released before. Swaroop and Ahluwalia are fellow travellers separated by time. Both are part of a scant but vital experimental scene that is barely seen outside film festivals and private screenings. Swaroop’s singular and deeply personal exploration of spiritual and romantic matters in small-town India represents the kind of rush-of-blood-to-the-head chutzpah that is rarely seen these days.
What passes off for independent cinema, at least by the time it gets readied as a link in the supply chain, is more offbeat than arthouse. The movies that manage to grab the trade’s attention are more honest and realistic than mainstream fare, and explore subjects shunned by formula-addicted filmmakers. They are also more accessible than such idiosyncratic projects as Miss Lovely, and often borrow elements from populist cinema (comedy, music) to widen their reach.
Rajat Kapoor’s Aankhon Dekhi, an accomplished picaresque comedy, emerged from the accessible offbeat corner. Kapoor’s beautifully shot and designed return-to-roots drama is set in Old Delhi, and is the wise and wistful yarn of an aging travel agent’s Quixotic quest for meaning and purpose. As his family unravels like a ball of wool, Bauji, played by Sanjay Mishra, pursues a wholly different thread.
Feroz Abbas Khan’s Dekh Tamasha Dekh is a seriocomic account of communal polarisation in a small town. A poor man is crushed to death by a politician’s oversized hoarding, sparking off claims from members of the Hindu religion he was born into and the Muslim faith he converted to. Despite its occasional staginess, Dekh Tamasha Dekh provides a scarily pertinent commentary on the divisive and delirious times in which we live.
Masurkar’s Sulemani Keeda is similarly bumpy, but is a nevertheless charming and warm slacker comedy about two film writers in search of work and love. Hope takes flight, hearts are broken and truths emerge about the movie business. Perhaps Bollywood satires are better left to the dissidents rather than the self-declared outsiders on the inside?
Sulemani Keeda was completed in 2013 but released only this year through PVR Director’s Rare. The multiplex chain’s programming slot is dedicated to alternative cinema in all languages, but there are caveats and challenges. Director’s Rare passes on the costs of digital projection and publicity to the filmmakers it signs up. Some films shown under this label are relegated to inconvenient time slots.
Indie spirit, celebrity flesh
Two years into its existence, Director’s Rare gives minnows a rare shot at entering the mainstream. But it doesn’t have an identity beyond being a screening platform, and it remains dependent on celebrity endorsement, as was evident in the case of the two documentaries that were released this year. Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap backed Nisha Pahuja’s The World Before Her, while director Anand Gandhi helped Nishtha Jain’s Gulabi Gang emerge out of the obscurity that usually envelops Indian documentaries.
Even as the mavericks attempt to enter the market on their own terms, mainstream Hindi cinema continues to reinvent itself by borrowing some tricks from independent filmmaking. Hasee Toh Phasee, Highway and Queen are firmly populist films, but their quirkiness, realistic acting, and believable characters and scenarios display the influence of arthouse storytelling. One of independent cinema’s most vocal mascots, Anurag Kashyap, seems to be showing the way. Kashyap’s Ugly, a gritty kidnapping drama, sneaked into cinemas at the end of 2014, a few months before his mega-budget extravaganza Bombay Velvet, starring box-office darlings Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma, arrives on the big screen.
One of the best independent films of the year has not yet been released. Chaitanya Tamhane’s debut Court, a fascinating multilingual study of the workings of the Indian judicial system, has picked up several awards at films festivals in India and abroad. What will its release plan be like? Will it get the showcasing it deserves, or will it need the encouragement of an influential celebrity or two? The fringe remains yoked to the mainstream in ways that are beneficial for both. But who will speak for the filmmaker who has a fiercely independent voice but no amplifier?