How does a simple family in a traditional village grapple with a transgender child and the concomitant sexuality and identity crises? Suhaas Bhosale’s Koti casts a sensitive, perceptive and insightful eye at the unusual problem. The fuss-free, straightforward film (which is often reminiscent of Zoya Akhtar’s Sheila Ki Jawaani in the Bombay Talkies (2013) anthology and Nishant Roy Bombarde’s short Daavratha ) handles its child protagonist with compassion and concern and is non-judgmental about the family, be it the helpless father who seeks respect from the community but can’t quite earn it or the rebellious kid who won’t let his “different” brother go away or the helpless mom who understands her children but can’t lend a hand to them.
The post-screening discussion on the film at the recently held Goa Marathi Film Festival in Panjim last month, was also as considered and measured. It led to many in the audience question the societal thoughtlessness and hypocrisy, and some even came up with positive examples of how a few real life families had been brave enough to have not abandoned their transgender children. The discussion left Bhosale feeling gratified. “It’s a film with children, so I couldn’t portray the ugliness and horror in the situation. I needed to entertain but wanted to convey something through entertainment. I am glad the film has reached out,” he said. The Nasik filmmaker regards Majid Majidi as his guru and his aspiration is to achieve his idol’s simple, seemingly artless filmmaking.
Shivaji Lotan Patil’s Halaal, too, is an unusual film about an odd Muslim custom. It’s about how a man who has divorced his wife on a whim can’t remarry her: that is, until she is married to another man and then divorced by him after the consummation of the marriage. In other words, it’s the woman who has to bear with ignominy, even in getting back her rightful place in the family fold, while the husband has to just wait and watch.
Uncommon, atypical themes like these were visible aplenty in the annual mela of Marathi cinema. A reassurance that the high praise being doled out regularly to Marathi filmmakers is not entirely misplaced. The three-day festival in Panjim aims to showcase the best of new, contemporary movies and will be celebrating a decade of existence in 2017.
The Goa Marathi Film Festival was started nine years ago to fill a vacuum: the total lack of Marathi films in Goan theatres. “The response was overwhelming and the shows were totally sold out,” says festival director Sanjay Shetye. The interactions after the screenings impressed the Marathi filmmakers enough to keep coming back every year to the “intelligent audience”. “Over the years it has built a reputation as one of the most sought after festivals where the who's who of the Marathi film industry is eager to participate,” says Shetye. From seven films and 12 screenings the festivcal has grown to 20 films and over 40 screenings now. This year, the organisers also went a step ahead and established Vinsan Academy of Film and Media in Panjim to train the local talent in filmmaking. “The film culture has grown but there has been no institute or facility to support it,” says Shetye.
The festival kicked off this year with a mainstream commercial film, Swapna Waghmare Joshi’s love story-cum-murder mystery Laal Ishq , produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Cross-cultural differences were explored in what one could call an NRI film, Meena Nerurkar’s Dot Com Mom : the first in Marathi to have been shot in America and premiered in Panjim.
Popular fare, like Mahesh Manjrekar’s Natsamrat , on an aging Shakespearean actor; Subodh Bhave’s Katyar Kaljat Ghusli about musical feud between two gharanas; Sachin Kundalkar’s Rajwade and Sons , about three generations of a dysfunctional family and Nagraj Manjule’s blockbuster, Sairat , were all consumed with frenzy and fervour by the audience.
But the one film, to get dissected and discussed, appreciated as well as ripped apart the most, perhaps, was Aadish Keluskar’s Kaul , primarily for how the experimental film left the audience befuddled. The beguiling film, with its mesmerising imagery, shot-taking and sound design, literally takes the viewer inside the troubled mind of its protagonist, brilliantly played by Rohit Kokate. Keluskar doesn’t attempt to tell a story, he doesn’t aim to provide any answers for his protagonist’s experiences either; he makes us feel and undergo the psychological journey along with him. Is this what despair and trauma feel like? At once profound and perplexing Kaul is essentially the externalisation of a man’s inner demons on screen.
Punarvasu Naik’s Vakratunda Mahakaya , Anurag Kashyap’s foray into Marathi film production, is a slick, well-mounted film set in Mumbai. About a bomb ticking away inside a Ganesha toy, it is a film that takes us through the social fabric of the mahanagar as the toy keeps changing hands. The film is structured around the stringing together of various social vignettes. Funny, satirical, sentimental by turn it moves around in circles to eventually head towards a finale against the backdrop of the annual Ganapati visarjan. It underlines the fact that, the ones who bear the brunt of any contentious issue in these troubled times are the underprivileged and the marginalised.
The urban landscape of films like Vakratunda was balanced out by the more rooted films. The farmer took centrestage in Makrand Mane’s Ringan , a simple father-and-son story and Prasad Namjoshi’s Ranga Patanga , about a simpleton in search of his missing pair of bulls.
The high praise being doled out regularly to Marathi filmmakers is not entirely misplaced
