Wednesday, July 18, 2012

SUPERMEN OF MALEGAON (2012) (Documentary)


“I’m the king of thu-thu gutkha. Main Hindustan ke har bachche ko, har jawan ko, har budhe ko sadakon par, diwaron pe, schoolon mein, college mein toilet mein... thunkte hue dekhna chahta hoon…kyunke muje gandagi pasand hai. I love gandagi!”

Thus spoke the indigenous villain of Malegaon ka supervillain. Is it a cult in making or what! Like most Indians I haven’t seen any of Malegaon cinema but watching this documentary made me salute the passion and spirit of a man named Nasir Shaikh & his non professional crew who put into shame even the professionals of film fraternity. They are not only the men who just dream and live cinema but also desperately going for lot of personal sacrifices and making the end meet to keep alive the flames of their creativity on silver screen against all odds and reality. Though making entertaining parody of Bollywood or Hollywood, they’re aiming to entertain their local audience with creative spirit of originality in many fronts and not just ripping the film as shamelessly as many poplar Hindi cinema.

In it’s one hour nine minutes duration, Faiza Ahmed  Khan’s this documentary or rather a making of ‘Malegaon ka Superman’ not only get us familiar with the madness of Malegaon’s film loving local crowd and the difficulty of a working class one man army director but also gave us the insider view of small town’s social and economical ground reality. The superman here is a working man in power loom surviving on less than a thousand rupees per month like many others; and its so unfortunate to know that the man died in cancer last year.


Watching the chronicle of Nasir Sheikh, the one man army producer-director-camera man along with two other multi task masters; a local video and sound editing master who not only achieves special effects editing on old PC and a writer, musician, singer, lyricist all in one talent who made me think when he recites one of his impromptu poetry on camera. Watch how the man directing his camera’s panning, close up, dolly shots, crane shots and moving shots and above all how they manage to make their superman fly! Long live Malegaon cinema and their superheroes; for me they are superheroes above fiction and above fact of their routine power loom reality.

Ratings-8/10 

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