At the Nave Valan film festival this month, watch some fine recent Marathi films.
The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in south Mumbai is set to charm the Marathi manoos with a film festival to run October 9-13. The festival will showcase commercially successful and critically acclaimed films of last year. With an annual box office collection of Rs 160 crore last year, 72 films were made in Marathi in 2009. Six have been selected for this year’s festival.
This is the second edition of the NCPA’s Nave Valan (New Turn) festival, which is designed to showcase the best of Marathi contemporary cinema and highlight emerging talent.
This year’s films are Natarang, Jeta, Lalbaugh Parel, Ringa Ringa, Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai and Jhing Chik Jhing. “The films were selected after interactions with people from the film industry, Marathi Chitrapat Mahamandal as well as film critics,” says Deepa Gahlot, NCPA’s head of theatre programming.
“Marathi culture” has become a politicised phrase in Maharashtra. Gahlot, therefore, explains that the attempt is not just to promote Marathi culture but the culture of Mumbai. “We had a theatre festival last month, and next month we have a competition of Marathi short plays. It is true that Marathi is widely spoken and understood in Mumbai, so we are organising these festivals.”
The film festival comes as a welcome gift for film enthusiasts. These films transcend the boundaries of language and address humanitarian issues. Natarang is the story of a small-town wrestler named Guna Kagalkar who loves tamasha folk theatre and wants to play the lead in a performance. The drama, however, also has a female role — so Kagalkar and his friends have to find a man willing to play a woman. They cannot, so Kagalkar unwillingly steps in. He is a success but there are, of course, consequences. The physically imposing Atul Kulkarni plays Kagalkar as both wrestler and “woman”, and it was reported that he had to first gain and then shed weight to play both halves of the role.
In Jeta, Ramesh Deo plays Yeshwant Rajadhyaksha, a retired law professor who has to take on the builder mafia who have killed his daughter, because he found evidence that they had illegally grabbed farmland for an SEZ. Fight your own battles, says this film.
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Lalbaug Parel tells the story of the millworkers who lost their livelihoods when Mumbai’s mills closed in the 1970s and 1980s. Director Mahesh Manjrekar focuses on the 1982 millworkers’ strike.
Mumbai-Pune-Mumbai dwells on the differences between people from the two cities, which often creates humour in their lives. It is a story of the impromptu falling in love of Mumbai girl and Pune boy.
Jhing Chik Jhing is based on the farmer suicides in Vidarbha. It is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Shyam, son of an indebted cotton farmer. It’s Rs 10,000 or suicide — so Shyam will take part in a race where the first prize is Rs 10,000.
For last year’s inaugural edition of Nave Valan, cinema lovers travelled to NCPA even from distant suburbs like Vasai. “Marathi cinegoers are very much clued in about what’s happening in the cultural arena,” says Gahlot, “and this year too we expect a huge turnout.”
For information on Nave Valan, call 022-66223724, 66223754
