Tag Archives: noreader

Nawazuddin Siddiqui – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

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Attempting to chat with Nawazuddin Siddiqui at a party is an awkward exercise. He barely has anything to say because he is simply not very good at making small talk. Interviewing him makes you feel like even more of an imposter. The traditional structure of an interview, the pre-designed questions, the whole format seems entirely unnecessary because you can tell he does not quite get what the fuss is about. The formality makes him stiffen, even though he has nothing to keep from you. Especially because he has nothing to keep from you. And yet, strip the formalities away, put him in a room with friends and he is the very life of a conversation—recounting anecdotes, confessing, mimicking, philosophizing—no holds barred. So here is something in between an informal chat and formal interview with the actor whose rise to fame has become a redemptive tale for actors struggling to break through the ranks of impossibly handsome or hereditary stars. Nothing about Nawaz’s life reflects stardom as we have come to know it and yet he is undisputedly a star— not one who consciously breaks moulds but one who is what he is because he neither knows nor cares about another way of being. Until he hears the call: “Action”.

 

Outtakes

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“This picture was shot on the sets of director Sudhir Mishra’s Khoya Khoya Chand (2007). For the climax the director wanted to recreate a storm. One of the Assistant Directors would call ‘action’ by giving a clap and immediately two gigantic fans would start to roar setting off dry leaves stacked in gunny bags places in front of the fans and in no time the set was overcome with a simulated storm. The AD who was giving the claps would not be able to get out of the way in time. All he had to shield himself from the storm was his clapboard.”

– Fawzan Husain

Inshallah, Kashmir

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Today Oscar nominated filmmaker Ashvin Kumar won a National Award for Best Investigative Film for Inshallah, Kashmir. This is his second National Award. His first win, for Best Film On Social Issues, was in 2012 for Inshallah, Football, his first film on Kashmir, which was followed by Inshallah, Kashmir. Despite two National Awards Kumar has still not been able to show his films in Srinagar. The film has now been made available to the public for free viewing and therefore a one of its kind opportunity for it to reach a wider audience in Kashmir.

 

DIRECTOR’S NOTE:

 

I made this film to throw light on the deep distrust and misconception of the Kashmiri and his aspirations for self-governance, as well as highlight the unacceptable, institutional abuse of individual human rights in the valley. The film questions the legitimacy and human cost of sustaining India’s occupation of Kashmir for over two decades and it does so through the telling of stories of terror and fear that haunt ordinary Kashmiri folk.

The testimonies in this film are those that the mainstream media keeps away from its audiences in India. Till we Indians understand and acknowledge the pain and suffering of our Kashmiri brethren, and what is happening in the name of India in Kashmir, no solution can ever be found. We need to evolve a new idiom based on the reality of what has happened in the past twenty five years. I hope Inshallah, Kashmir provides one such reference point.

Outtakes

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“I took this picture on the sets of Mr. Hot Mr. Kool in May 2006. A song sequence was being shot where these extras were supposed to woo the male leads of the film, Zulfi Syed and Yash Pandit— exuding oomph as they closed in on them. In a dark corner of the set a helping hand from the light department was watching unnoticed— the film’s first captivated audience.”

– Fawzan Husain

Sudershan (Chimpanzee) Superstar

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Sudershan (Chimpanzee) is a graphic novel about a primate who became a movie star. Here is an excerpt that tells the tale of his ascent through the Bombay film industry’s underbelly in the 1960s. Written by Rajesh Devraj. Illustrated by Meren Imchen

This extract from Sudershan (Chimpanzee) is reproduced courtesy of Hachette India

Buy the book, and read the full story of Sudershan here

Cinema’s Most Iconic Fashion Moment

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We ask fashion designers to share their favourite fashion moment or style statement from the movies

“The movie Unzipped, an artistic account of a fashion designer in Manhattan, is filled with superb fashion moments that a fashion designer goes through in the course of creating a fashion collection. (Isaac) Mizrahi at his best performance— perhaps the only well documented insider’s view of how fashion is created.”

—Raghavendra Rathore is a leading Indian fashion designer. His label, Rathore Jodhpur, is known for having reinvented traditional royal designs from Rajasthan for a modern, global aficionado.

 

Scene from Unzipped— Isaac Mizrahi on putting together the pieces of the fashion puzzle

 

Scene from Unzipped— Mizrahi outlines his creative vision for his 1994 Fall show 

 

Scene from Unzipped— On the ramp and backstage with supermodels at Mizrahi’s show

 

SPOOFING US

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India’s first international spoof film fest is here. But how has the genre evolved through the ages? And what does it stand for in India? 

Spoofhmania is India’s first international short film festival on spoofs. It’s taking place from November 20 to 25 at various venues throughout Delhi (especially in the Hauz Khas village) and Gurgaon, with the grand finale being hosted at the Siri Fort Auditorium.

The festival is the brainchild of Delhi-based Short Film Organization Filmbooth, which was founded by Gaurav Raturi, Mohak Mathur, Nagendra Singh, Ajesh Balachandran and Sumit Nanda in 2008, as a platform for short films. The team believes short films are a democratic medium and “the next big thing in the entertainment sector”. Gaurav Raturi explains that they initially conducted short film festivals for social causes such as education, the World Environment Day, the Millenium Development Goals, “and then we felt we needed to do something fun, needed to do the opposite”.

For Spoofhmania the team collaborated with Crowd Funding Platform Wishberry to raise funds. Entries have poured in over the last few months and the six day festival will screen selected spoofs in its competition section. Among the most exciting entries are Creamerica, a crime drama spoof co-directed by Subhashini Dewada, Vinimay and Varun P Anand that is a mash-up of several popular films and characters including Godfather and popular Indian TV drama CID; Lubdhanam Cora (The Greedy Thief), an animation film, written and directed by Sagar Kadam, which won the Special Jury Award in a competition organized by ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation) India; and Casting Call by Nicholas Grasso, a spoof movie where Robert De Niro meets Johnny Depp.

Spoofs, or parodies, are a sub-genre of comedy. The team at Spoofhmania, however, doesn’t believe in an iron-clad definition for the genre. The idea, simply, is to make people laugh and take a less-serious approach to life, to bring together a crazy mix of films and people, and have some fun. Hence, the ‘h’ in the middle of the festival’s name, or a jury, who will be judging the films in the competition section, called the ‘cabinet of ministers of spoof’. The Ministers of Spoof include Rahul da Cunha, MD and Creative Director at DaCunha Communications, the company behind Amul’s legendary ad campaigns; Josy Paul, Chairman and National Creative Director at advertising firm BBDO India, and Documentary Filmmaker Nitin Sukhija.

There will also be screenings of Hindi spoof movies (Tere Bin Laden) and those from abroad (Spider-Plant Man), as well as viral videos (How It Should Have Ended). Two films to watch out for will be Sita Sings The Blues, an animated version of the Ramayana tale, through a feminist lens, that integrates blues music with mythology and Star Wreck (an obvious take on Star Trek). Besides films, the festival will showcase spoof through stand up gigs like ‘Stand up for the Spoof’ by Sanjay Rajora, Mahep Singh (winner of best comedian at the Indian Comedy festival, Delhi 2012) and Amit Tandon, art exhibitions and a ‘Spoof Parliament’ with Ministers of Spoof Josy Paul and Nitin Sukhija.

It is difficult to identify the first spoof movie. Among the earliest was the 1922 silent film Mud and Sand. The film spoofed and satirized several scenes from the succesful Blood and Sand, released in the same year which told the tragic tale of a great Spanish matador and his disastrous extramarital affair. So Matador Rudolph Valentino and his wife Carmen became ‘Rhubarb Vaselino’ and ‘Caramel’ in the spoof. A scene from the movie, lauded for its slapstick comic precision even today, is one in which Vaselino tosses the bull over the fence and it lands sitting upright in a spectator’s chair. In the 1940s and the 1950s, spoofs began to find recognition as a valid film genre. Charlie Chaplin parodied Hitler and his Nazi regime in The Great Dictator. The spoofs of William Abbott and Lou Costello centred around encounters of the comedic pair with characters from the suspense, horror and science fiction films of Universal Studios with names like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

It was in the late 1970s that the spoof movie became a widely watched genre. Filmmaker Mel Brooks made the spoof a part of mainstream Hollywood with films like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, both ranking among the biggest money-makers of their times. Blazing saddles earned Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Original Song, while Young Frankenstein was nominated for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay. The comedy trio of the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams made Kentucky Fried Movie, crime comedies in The Naked Gun series, and the classic Airplane!— which has been on several funny movies lists, and has been ranked 10th in an American Film Institute’s list of the hundred funniest films. British comedy troupe Monty Python parodied King Arthur and his knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Today, in Hollywood, spoofs have grown into big franchises with spy comedies like the Austin Powers films and the Scary Movie series.

In India, however, the spoof is a genre whose true potential is yet to be realized. “There are a lot of viral videos online but we don’t have much spoof in the mainstream,” says Raturi. Films like Tere Bin Laden and the recent Supermen of Malegaon would fit the bill. A cult classic is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: “The scene where they use the Mahabharat— that’s the cult scene which made Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron so popular,” Raturi says. Satish Kaushik, one of the dialogue writers of the film, has said in an interview to daily.bhaskar.com how the idea of bringing all the characters of the film and the epic together, in a comic climax on a theatre stage, came to him. “I saw cheap colourful comics of Laila Majnu, Shirin-Farhad, Mughal-e-Azam,” he said. “That’s how the idea struck! In the climax, we wanted a blend of characters.” During the actual filming the actors, some of the best in the country, took to improvising the scene to make it what it is today.

Meryl Mary Sebastian