Archive: December 2010
At first I would like to thank everybody for all the comments, which have been done on my various articles on this blog. Unfortunately I had no time to answer, because as a company we have so many projects going on that there is not much time left.
Indian cinema is definitely on the move. This year and last year more and more Indian films have been presented on International film festivals. Most of the Indian feature films don’t need the foreign market such as Europe, because inside India and its huge community abroad there are enough spectators to watch their movies.
As I mentioned already in an article below, “Peepli live” by Anusha Rizvi is one of the movies, which came out in the cinemas in England, the US, Germany and Poland. France will follow in 2011. In case you don’t live in one of these countries, you can watch the movie on DVD. Another movie release is awaited, the film “Dhobi Ghat” (Mumbai diaries) by Kiran Rao, also an Aamir Khan production. About him and his company I have already written.
“Dhobi Ghat” tells the story of 4 characters: Munna, the young dhobi, who dreams to become a star in Bollywood film. (Dhobi Ghats are places in India, where men are washing the laundry of people in their area.) Besides Munna, there is a painter, Arun, and Shai, a banker on a trip to India, who falls for the withdrawn Arun. Or does she fall for Munna, the simple dhobi and rat hunter? It is up to you to discover. Further there is Yasmin, a recently married girl, who is a mysterious woman, taken in a video. Arun and the spectator are fascinated by what happened in her life. All these different people meet and live in Mumbai. It is a poetic homage to Bombay in a European style. For me personally it is one of the best movies, I saw lately. Hopefully it comes to the cinemas in Europe!
For big dance scenes and bright colors you could watch the comedy “Golmaal 3″, directed by Rohit Shetty, one of the box office hits in India this year. I can’t say much about the movie, because you need to speak Hindi to understand the story and its humor. “Band Baaja Baaraat” by Maneesh Sharma is another comedy full of live, colors and dances, which takes place in New Delhi. Two students in college discover that they can make good money, organizing Indian marriages with 3000 to 20.000 people. Despite they are quite different, they fall in love with each other. But the young man doesn’t want to see, that he loves his colleague. Finally they dispute and separate their business, which goes down the drain for each of them. Sometimes at two you are more powerful and stronger than on your own, and everything can work much better. This comedy is based in daily life of India, making everything more colorful and happy, than reality would be. It is a classical Bollywood movie we may keep in our mind.
You could also watch “Kites” (director Anurag Basu), which didn’t work too well in the Indian cinemas. It is a high budget style movie with Hrithik Roshan. But when the spectator can’t feel with the protagonists and doesn’t understand, why these two people fall in love, then sometimes the limits of a spectator may be reached. On the contrary a movie, spectators loved a lot this year, was “Dabangg” by the young director Abhinav Kashyap with Salman Khan, one of the big stars in Indian cinema.
Interesting will be the reaction to the film “That girl in yellow boots”, directed by Anurag Kashyap, which was screened in Venice and Toronto film festival. You can discover a different daily life in a metropolis like Mumbai than you would think. As always the visuals and the mise-en-scène of Anurags’ film are exquisite and you can discover wonderful, new Indian actors. I already spoke about his former film “Dev D” and his production “Udaan”, screened in Cannes film festival this year.
A highly recommended film, but not much spoken about in India, was the Maharati movie “Vihir”. The director Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni tells the story of two cousins in a typical Indian village in Maharashtra. The younger boy admires the older one. One day the elder cousin dies and the 13 years old boy can’t understand, why the adults continue to live with his cousins’ death as if nothing has happened. He can’t live with this great loss and runs away from his parents. It takes him a long time to live with this destiny… Vihir /The well was invited at Berlin and Rotterdam International film festivals. Hopefully we can watch it soon in the cinemas in Europe!
(If you would like to read more about Indian cinema, please read further down::))