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Tag: Deepti Kakkar

  • Mardaani…If you say so!

    Mardaani…If you say so!

    MUMBAI: There have been some women cop stories. But not many have succeeded. Vijayashanti’s Tejashwini was one that worked while Dimple Kapadia’s Zakhmi Aurat did not work. Women oriented action films are rare and far in-between because usually they don’t work at the box office. 

    Rani Mukerji is an angry woman cop with the Mumbai Police Crime Branch. She can take on anyone. She is efficient, well-versed with the law and can throw punches like an action-film hero. Hence she is described as Mardaani. To this end, the customary fight scene in the beginning establishes that: she keeps slapping a goon as she lists the penal codes under which he can be arrested. She does not arrest him because that would have added extra length to the film unnecessarily; the idea was only to demonstrate her powers and bravery.

    Rani has rescued a young girl, Priyanka Sharma, who was on verge of being sold.Rani sort of adopts her even though the girl lives at a shelter for such children. In the day time, the girl sells flowers at traffic signals where she is spotted by a woman who adds her to her list of girls to be kidnapped. There is a very organised and clever bunch of people behind the kidnapping of young girls and running a child sex trafficking ring. Rani keeps in touch with Priyanka on regular basis but when she does not see her for few days, Rani suspects she is kidnapped.

    Rani keeps getting lucky with clues through the film and soon picks up the man who sold Priyanka. However, the criminals are a step ahead and shoot the man. He is killed while in the police van with an inspector by his side. Oddly, there is no glass shattered even though the man has been shot in the back of his head. For Rani, Priyanka’s kidnapping has become personal and she chases up after the leads as her mission. All she knows about the villain is his voice as he keeps in touch with her on her cell. He loves this kind of game.

    Producer: Aditya Chopra.

    Director: Pradeep Sarkar.

    Cast: Rani Mukerji, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Priyanka Sharma.

    The girls kidnapped are then decked up and paraded before interested clients who prefer sex with small girls. Among them is also a VIP politician. Of course, since such a business needs patronage from high and mighty. The villain, Tahir Raj Bhasin, operates with the help of his father who is the mastermind and also deals in drugs. This is convenient for Rani and she sends two Nigerians as decoys offering to sell 5kg of drugs, something only a big buyer would be interested in. The father-son duo fall for this trap. Bhasin is about to reach where his father is concluding the deal when Rani and her men raid the place. The father is trapped but kills himself while locked in a bathroom rather than be caught as they would make him talk and Bhasin would be caught too. But this father had one bad habit, getting his pants and shirts stitched from a tailor whose labels he never thought of removing.

    Rani traces the villains’ house through the tailor and recces it for a couple of days before she enters it all ready to be caught expecting to be taken where the girls are kept. She succeeds. It is time for some action for taaliyaan.

    Mardaani depends heavily on Rani and this film, having been made for her, avoids any other known face. The villain is new and hardly menacing enough. Without a strong villain, mard or mardaani don’t amount to much. Rani is okay trying to be a real cop mouthing Bambaiya bad words. Bhasin is passable despite having a weak character. Priyanka does well. The film has no songs except a theme song. Direction is average and the making is generally economical. Background score tries to create thrills that don’t exist. Dialogue is routine with no claptrap one-liners.

    Katiyabaaz….. Of another world

    The title does not quite convey what this docu-feature is all about. That’s not surprising, since it is a colloquial word used in Uttar Pradesh to refer to power thieves, the guys who are experts in cutting through heavy duty electric cables to attach illegal connections. This is an all-India phenomena but happens mostly in states with severe power shortages and UP leads on this count. Hence, the events depicted are based in Kanpur, once industrial thriving city now fallen on bad days.

    Producers: Deepti Kakkar, Fahad Mustafa

    Directors: Farhad Mustafa, Deepti Kakkar.

    Cast: Ritu Maheshwari, Loha Singh and local and national politicians.

    Katiyabaaz juxtaposes two versions of the story: that of a renowned power thief and of the chairperson of the Kanpur Electricity supply board, a lady by the name of Ritu Maheshwari. The politicians playing up the public against the power supply board is inevitable. Politicians fail to build infrastructure and then incite the masses against the board.

    Ritu is the new chief at the Kanpur KESCO, who has sworn to put an end to power stealing to bring some stability to the company. Loha Singh, the celebrated power thief, is not scared of either the KESCO or the police; he is not even scared of shocks having survived many. While Ritu strives to plug all the gaps, Loha thrives in his business of giving people illegal connections for a fee. Ritu has a huge problem on her hands. To make matters worse, some of her own staffers are involved in encouraging thefts, either for money or out of fear. They are no support to her. To top it all the theft causes transformers to catch fire and causes power outages lasting from hours to days. And trying to make the most of the situation is the local SP MLA, Irfan Solanki, who leads a revolt against the power company since the 2012 assembly elections are round the corner. It is BSP rule in the state and SP wants to come back to power. It is typical politics, UP style. It is not just UP politicians: the feature also depicts Dr Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi criticising the functioning of the Kanpur Electric company. Poor Ritu!

    The makers have used all real life characters who were part of these events and covered the versions of Loha Singh, the almost revered power thief aka Katiyabaaz because of whom many small scale industries survive in Kanpur as against the views of Ritu.

    In the end, Ritu is sacked from her post and Irfan Solanki is re-elected as MLA, this time as his party, SP, wins a majority. Loha continues with his business as usual. Loha is a natural facing the camera; he is not scared of power company or the police but he is also not scared of owning up to everything on a camera!

    Katiyabaaz is being released in about 40 screens since it is not a regular entertainer. Yet, it is informative and an eye-opener.

  • ‘Fandry’ honoured with top feature award at IFFLA

    ‘Fandry’ honoured with top feature award at IFFLA

    NEW DELHI: The Marathi film Fandry by Nagraj Manjule centering around a romance between two people of different castes has been chosen for the grand prize of the best feature film at the Twelfth Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles which concluded in Hollywood this week. 

     

    The Grand Jury Prize for best documentary went to Powerless, directed by Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar. 

     

    The prize for best short, which included a cash grant from HBO, was presented to Alchemy, directed by Pranay Patwardhan, Shivangi Ranawat and Janmeet Singh. 

     

    Honourable mentions were awarded to the narrative feature Siddharth directed by Richie Mehta, and the short film Love.Love.Love directed by Sandhya Daisy Sundaram. 

     

    Audience awards were given to Richie Mehta’s Siddharth, the documentary Faith Connections by Pan Nalin’s and the short film Kush. 

     

    “All of the films were a pleasure to watch,” the jury said in a statement. “We are in awe of and inspired by the stories that the filmmakers brought to us. Many of the films dealt with the exploitation of children, such as child labour. The film we chose – Fandry – features stunning cinematic quality and powerful story-telling, capturing the inner life of its young hero, and providing a detailed and intimate illustration of the social power structure of his village.” 

     

    The jurors were Variety critic David Chute, Crackle and Sony Pictures Television head of digital development John Orlando along with actresses Shohreh Aghdashloo and Meera Simhan. 

     

    Powerless is about India’s struggle to get electricity to its people. “For its portrayal of a community faced with a power struggle over limited resources and its complex web of stories, the jury gives the documentary award to Powerless,” the documentary jury said. 

     

    Filmmaker Brian Knappenberger, festival programmer Dilcia Barrera and producer Chris Salvaterra served on the documentary jury. 

     

    The short Alchemy.received the award for being “Culturally rooted and formally inventive, this film used mixed media to create a one of a kind film-going experience,” said the jury comprising HBO’s Gena Desclos, festival programmer Heidi Zwicker, and filmmaker Kamal K.M. 

     

    The Festival had concentrated on films made outside the Bollywood studio system to Hollywood. The six-day event screened 33 feature films, documentaries and short films by filmmakers from nine countries exploring Indian stories. 

     

    Festival director Jasmine Jaisinghani said the IIFLA aims to be “the Sundance of Indian cinema”, with films that contrast Bollywood’s often glamorised escapism with vivid realism. “A lot of our filmmakers are interested in telling stories of people that are not represented,” Jaisinghani added, “The films we curate are dealing with touching on various aspects and concerns of the filmmaker’s own society.”

     

    The festival began with Sold, a gritty drama by director Jeffrey D. Brown about a 13-year-old girl sold into prostitution in India. Brown said he wanted the film to be a call to action globally for people to take a stand against child prostitution and slavery, which as of 2013, involved 115 million around the world, according to the United Nations. 

     

     Sold, starring young actress Niyar Saikia who turned 13 while filming explores the harsh, terrible reality of child prostitution in India, but with a pinch of song-and-dance to “get the audience through” the dark themes, Brown said. 

     

    Brown, who won an Oscar in 1986 for best short live-action film, said India is experiencing a “golden age” as filmmakers from the subcontinent breakout into the wider film industry. “It’s a new wave of Indian cinema,” he said. “This is really mainstream, global cinema. It’s not art house exclusively.” 

     

    Others included Liar’s Dice about a rural village woman who sets off to find her missing husband. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah in January, the largest gathering for the independent film community in the United States. 

     

    In Siddharth, a father and mother go in search of their 12-year-old son who disappears after leaving home to find work in Delhi. 

     

    Bombay Talkies is an anthology of short films from four celebrated Indian directors, exploring love stories of ordinary people. The Auction House: A Tale of Two Brothers is a documentary of two Kolkata brothers who own one of the oldest auction houses in the city.

     

    The festival’s closing night film was Jadoo by British director Amit Gupta, a light-hearted comedy about a British-Indian family, and two food-loving brothers torn apart over the sale of a recipe. Set in Leicester, a city in the East Midlands of England, Gupta mined his own experiences of growing up in a family-run restaurant to tell “a simple story” about family and cuisine. 

     

    Jadoo, starring Amara Karan as the daughter trying to repair the rift between her father and her uncle, works as both a glimpse into the British-Indian community of Leicester, and the bigger theme of family feuds and culinary traditions, which the director believes will resonate with a larger audience.

  • Indian documentaries to screen at IDFA filmfest in Amsterdam

    Indian documentaries to screen at IDFA filmfest in Amsterdam

    NEW DELHI: Three Indian documentaries will be screened at the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held in Amsterdam from 20 November to 1 December.  

    Menstrual Man by Amit Virmani and Powerless or Katiyabaaz by Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar will screen under the Reflecting Images: Best of Fests section; and My Name is Salt by Farida Pacha will compete in the IDFA Competition for First Appearance section.

    Amit Virmani’s Menstrual Man is a Singapore – India production. Arunachalam Muruganantham is considered a madman in his village for he has achieved a feat that is considered to be pervert by his community. He has devised a manually operated machine to make low-cost sanitary pads. The napkins are made by and for rural Indian women. The film made its Canadian Premiere at the HotDocs, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto this year.

    Powerless or Katiyabaaz traces the city of Kanpur that has 15-hour power cuts. Hundreds of people steal electricity, amidst high risks, to meet their needs. The real trouble starts with the entry of the first female chief of the electricity company who vows to wipe out all illegal connections. Powerless has been one of the most talked about documentaries of the year. The film premiered at Berlinale Forum and competed at the Tribeca Film Festival 2013.

    My Name is Salt is a documentary on the salt families of India. Every year the monsoon turns the desert into sea, washing away the salt fields. Thousands of families move to the desert for eight months to extract salt from the earth. Farida Pacha’s The Women in Blue Berets was screened at Open Frame 2012, organised by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) in collaboration with the India International Centre, New Delhi.

  • Indian documentaries to screen at IDFA filmfest in Amsterdam

    Indian documentaries to screen at IDFA filmfest in Amsterdam

    NEW DELHI: Three Indian documentaries will be screened at the International Documentary Film Festival that will be held in Amsterdam from 20 November to 1 December.  

     

    Menstrual Man by Amit Virmani and Powerless or Katiyabaaz by Fahad Mustafa and Deepti Kakkar will screen under the Reflecting Images: Best of Fests section; and My Name is Salt by Farida Pacha will compete in the IDFA Competition for First Appearance section.

     

    Amit Virmani’s Menstrual Man is a Singapore – India production. Arunachalam Muruganantham is considered a madman in his village for he has achieved a feat that is considered to be pervert by his community. He has devised a manually operated machine to make low-cost sanitary pads. The napkins are made by and for rural Indian women. The film made its Canadian Premiere at the HotDocs, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto this year.

     

    Powerless or Katiyabaaz traces the city of Kanpur that has 15-hour power cuts. Hundreds of people steal electricity, amidst high risks, to meet their needs. The real trouble starts with the entry of the first female chief of the electricity company who vows to wipe out all illegal connections. Powerless has been one of the most talked about documentaries of the year. The film premiered at Berlinale Forum and competed at the Tribeca Film Festival 2013.

     

    My Name is Salt is a documentary on the salt families of India. Every year the monsoon turns the desert into sea, washing away the salt fields. Thousands of families move to the desert for eight months to extract salt from the earth. Farida Pacha’s The Women in Blue Berets was screened at Open Frame 2012, organised by the Public Service Broadcasting Trust (PSBT) in collaboration with the India International Centre, New Delhi.